Case STUDIES
L’Oreal and Ankar: Seeing and safeguarding innovation
L’Oréal’s research teams generate hundreds of patents each year. Keeping that innovation exclusive falls to Jean-Yves Legendre, a scientist turned strategist who has spent more than two decades at the company, safeguarding its innovation in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Customer
L'Oreal
date
November 10, 2025
length
active patents
For Jean-Yves, innovation has never been an abstract idea. It’s something you can see, examine, and safeguard. A scientist by training and a strategist by practice, he has spent more than two decades helping L’Oréal transform discoveries into defensible, long-term advantage.
With a PhD in biopharmaceutics and years in R&D before joining L’Oréal, Jean-Yves pairs scientific precision with the strategic mindset he’s built over two decades inside the company. It’s a combination that shapes how he views patents: not as filings only, but as levers that safeguard the technologies behind L’Oréal’s brands.
“A granted patent is not the end of the journey. It’s the beginning. Patents protect the technologies our brands rely on, and keep infringing products off the market. That is why competitive patent intelligence has to be woven into our processes, our teams, and every key decision.”
- Jean Yves Legendre, Competitive IP Intelligence Manager, L’Oréal
At L’Oréal, where scientific discovery happens at scale, that mindset is essential. Seeing innovation is one part of the process, safeguarding and leveraging it is another.
Protecting Patents at a Global Scale
Each year, the cosmetics industry sees tens of thousands of new patents and thousands of products launched worldwide. L’Oréal plays a major role in that momentum, with laboratories advancing innovations across chemistry, biology, packaging, and materials science.
Yet a patent is only the starting point. Once an invention is patented, the work of safeguarding those rights begins. That responsibility falls to Jean-Yves and his team, who monitor a shifting global landscape to ensure that L’Oréal’s patented technologies are respected.
His team identifies early signals of potential infringement - moments where competitor product launches and activities encroach on L’Oréal’s patents. These insights guide decisions on where to strengthen protection, challenge competitors, or invest further in strategic areas of research.
In the past, infringement detection was painstakingly manual and complex: monitoring competitors, reviewing multiple data sources, and analyzing different technologies (chemistry, devices, packaging). This process was of high importance, but teams were limited by time to go through thousands of patents and competitor products at scale.
“Simply put, humans alone cannot monitor thousands of patent families against thousands of products. With AI, it saves us countless hours. Instead of searching for risk, we spend our time acting on it. There were no real ways to do this before."
- Jean Yves Legendre, Competitive IP Intelligence Manager, L’Oréal
Today, with Ankar’s AI-powered infringement detection, the teams can review large data sets in moments, flag high quality signals of risk, and focus human expertise where it has the greatest impact. The system highlights potential conflicts early, allowing experts to focus on strategic actions with these identified infringements.
As one of the most advanced patent organisations globally, L’Oréal’s adoption of AI-driven infringement detection signals something broader: a new normal in how leading innovators protect their patents.
A partnership shaped by ambition
For Ankar, working with L’Oréal has been as much about collaboration as capability. The partnership has been defined by a shared goal: bringing greater precision and foresight to the protection of intellectual property.
When Jean-Yves first encountered Ankar, what stood out to him was not a pre-packaged product, but a willingness to listen. Many IP tools offer a single, standardised platform. L’Oréal’s needs were different: deep chemistry, complex formulations, multiple territories, and a focus on actionable infringement cases.
“AI is not magic. It has to fit in the organisation and in the full process. You have to consider the impact on people, teams, and how the mission is shared worldwide.”
- Jean Yves Legendre, Competitive IP Intelligence Manager, L’Oréal
Working closely with Jean-Yves’ team, Ankar has refined its technology to reflect the realities of modern IP work, where patent expertise and artificial intelligence intersect to create tangible outcomes for L’Oréal: enhanced breadth and quality of infringement detection work, and new possibilities to leverage their patents. Together, they are reshaping infringement detection into a strategic capability.
L’Oréal’s shift from manual infringement detection to AI-driven monitoring represents more than an operational shift; it signals a broader change in the patent world. Leading filers are beginning to protect their patent portfolios with the same level of technological sophistication used to create it. For a company at L’Oréal’s scale, AI turns patent protection from a reactive task into a strategic advantage.
Most vendors came with a fixed solution. With Ankar, they began with our needs. They understood patents, spoke our language, and adapted to our needs by configuring their existing technology into a solution that fits our reality.
Jean Yves Legendre
IP Intelligence Manager, L’Oréal
