China's agricultural patents: How has their value changed amid recent patent boom?

Patent applications have surged in China over the past two decades. Has the application boom been accompanied by a simultaneous drop in the value (quality) of the patents? Our research examines this question by analyzing invention patents in agriculture. Using data from China's State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) for patents between 1985 and 2005 that had been granted before January 2011, we conduct duration analysis of patent life span and the length of patent renewal with the Weibull and Cox Proportional Hazard modeling respectively. The results show that the value of Chinese agricultural patents, measured by their life span and renewal length, has been improving, although foreign grants are still maintained significantly longer than domestic ones. For domestic grants, private entities, especially companies, are more likely to have a longer patent protection period than public entities. Furthermore, patent value varies significantly across different technological fields, with grants to inventions in complex and emerging technologies such as agricultural biotechnology and agricultural chemicals demonstrating higher value than others. The findings have implications for understanding the impacts of China's innovation policy on global patenting activities as well as China's innovation trajectory in agriculture and other sectors.     

Commercialization,renewal, and quality of patents

One of the major reasons why inventors are awarded patents by governments is they encourage R&D investments and commercialization of inventions. If the patent holder commercializes his/her invention, he/she has stronger incentives to retain the patent. The purpose here is to empirically analyze the relationship between commercialization and the renewal of patents. At the same time, I take into account defensive patent strategies (e.g. deterring competitors from utilizing the patent) and pointedly ask if there are any third factors (quality of the patent) that affect the commercialization and renewal decisions. Using a detailed database of Swedish patents, I utilize a survival model to estimate how commercialization influences the patent renewal decision. Basic results show not only that commercialization and defensive strategies increase the probability a patent will be renewed, but also that quality influences commercialization and renewal decisions. When controlling for the endogenous commercialization decision, there is still a strong positive relationship between commercialization and renewal of patents. Thus, given the quality of the patent, if the owner decides to commercialize the patent on the margin, this leads to longer survival of the patent. With regard to commercialization modes, there is some evidence that licensed patents and patents commercialized in original and new firms – but not acquired patents – survive longer than non-commercialized patents. Looking more closely at the contracts of acquired and licensed patents, contracts with both variable and fixed fees – but not contracts with either variable or fixed fees – survive longer than non-commercialized patents. However, the analysis about modes and contract terms does not take into account the endogeneity problem.     

Valuation of patents in emerging economies: a renewal model-based study of Indian patents

ABSTRACT

This study uses patent renewal information to estimate the private value of patents. Patent value refers to the economic reward that the inventor extracts from commercialising the patented invention. Our empirical analysis comprises 555 patents with applications filed between 1999 and 2002. The term of these patents either ended in 2018 or lapsed due to non-payment of the renewal fee. We model the renewal decision of patentee as ordered probit where patent renewal fee increases with the age of the patent. Variables, such as patent family size, technological scope, number of inventors and grant lag, are used as explanatory variables in the corresponding regression. Hence, this paper combines the patentee’s renewal decision along with patents’ characteristics and renewal cost schedule to estimate the initial rent distribution. We find that a large number of patents expire at an early stage leaving few patents with high value corroborating the results of studies using European, American and Chinese data. As expected, patents from certain technology class enjoy high valuation.     

The Effect of Technological Impact upon Patent Renewal Decisions

This paper analyzes the relationship between the technological impact of US patents, as measured using patent citation analysis, and the renewal decisions made by their owners. A significant positive relationship was discovered between these variables across a number of time periods. For example, 60% of patents uncited in the first eight years after publication were renewed at that point, compared with over 90% of patents cited more than 50 times in the first eight years. The relationship between citations and renewals remained highly significant even after controlling for differences between internal and external citations, and differences in technologies and patent ownership. Further analysis was undertaken into the relative influence of technological impact and maintenance costs upon renewal decisions. This analysis revealed that after patent maintenance fees were doubled for patents applied for after August 1982, a larger proportion of patents was maintained at each renewal point despite the increase. These patents also had a greater technological impact than patents applied for prior to the increase in maintenance fees, reflected by the larger number of citations they received. It may thus be inferred that the technological impact of patents had a greater influence upon renewal decisions than economic concerns regarding the costs of their renewal.     

The Effect of Technological Impact upon Patent Renewal Decisions

This paper analyzes the relationship between the technological impact of US patents, as measured using patent citation analysis, and the renewal decisions made by their owners. A significant positive relationship was discovered between these variables across a number of time periods. For example, 60% of patents uncited in the first eight years after publication were renewed at that point, compared with over 90% of patents cited more than 50 times in the first eight years. The relationship between citations and renewals remained highly significant even after controlling for differences between internal and external citations, and differences in technologies and patent ownership. Further analysis was undertaken into the relative influence of technological impact and maintenance costs upon renewal decisions. This analysis revealed that after patent maintenance fees were doubled for patents applied for after August 1982, a larger proportion of patents was maintained at each renewal point despite the increase. These patents also had a greater technological impact than patents applied for prior to the increase in maintenance fees, reflected by the larger number of citations they received. It may thus be inferred that the technological impact of patents had a greater influence upon renewal decisions than economic concerns regarding the costs of their renewal.     

论人工智能生成发明的可专利性及权利归属

当前，人工智能发明对专利客体范围、专利“三性”审查标准及专利权属制度造成巨大冲击。就专利客体而言，在“算法＋技术”规则的指引下，可将人工智能生成的技术方案明确为方法类专利客体；在专利“三性”审查方面，借鉴人工智能技术中立优势对相关发明进行“新式审查”，可以化解对传统审查方式的冲击；在专利权属制度设计上，基于产业政策和利益平衡考量，构建以人工智能投资者为核心、辅之以意思自治原则的专利权属制度成为必然。     

Can patent family size and composition signal patent value?

Recent research has proposed a method of patent valuation based on weighting patent family size by the market size of the countries in the family. The premise is that inventors tend to seek greater international coverage for their more valuable patents. The paper presents a novel way to test the ability of market size-weighted patent families to predict patent value and compares the method against extant measures of patent valuation based on patent citations and renewal behaviour. We use forecasting techniques to show that the weighted patent family size measure outperforms other methods in terms of predicting patent life and the number of citations. An advantage of the weighted patent family size measure is that it is based on ex-ante information and is easy to construct for purposes of evaluating patent value. We demonstrate this advantage using a large, comprehensive database of international patent families.     

Home or next door? Patenting by European food and beverage multinationals

We study the location of the inventive activity of 59 major European food and beverage multinationals and their 8432 subsidiaries worldwide, by analysing the geographical distribution of the inventors listed in the European Patent Office (EPO) applications, US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patents and triadic, international and Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent families of the companies filed between 1978 and the early 2000s. The sampled companies tend to locate their R&D activities in the home country. EU-based companies, more specifically, deploy an intra-regional strategy in EU countries, especially with regard to the inventions most closely related to their core businesses (food), for which, however, they do not display a home-country preference. Inventions related to non-core business tend to be produced in extra-regional locations.     

Patent Protection in the Shadow of Infringement: Simulation Estimations of Patent Value

Empirical estimates of the private value of patent protection are derived for four technology areas_computers, textiles, combustion engines, and pharmaceuticals_using new patent data for West Germany, 1953–1988. Patentees must pay renewal fees to keep their patents in force as well as legal expenses in order to enforce them. A dynamic stochastic discrete choice model of optimal renewal decisions is developed incorporating both learning and depreciation as well as the potential need to prosecute infringement. The evolution of the distribution of returns over the life of a group of patents is calculated for each technology using a minimum distance simulation estimator. Results indicate that the aggregate value of protection generated per year is on the order of 10% of related R&D expenditure.     

Losing the lead: the patenting decision in the light of the disclosure requirement

Empirical findings state that the disclosure requirement might be a reason for firms to rely on secrecy rather than patents to protect their inventions. We choose a dynamic framework in which we can explicitly analyze the patenting decision reflecting the tradeoff between a positive protective effect and a negative effect due to the required disclosure of the protected invention. In spite of a patent, the inventor's rival may still enter the market with a non-infringing product. Measuring the technological lead of the inventor by a time advantage he has compared with his rival, we show that if his headstart exceeds a critical threshold, he will not patent and rather rely on secrecy.     

Tracing the Evolution of Biomedical 3D Printing Technology Using Ontology-Based Patent Concept Analysis

Three-dimensional (3D) printing enables products to be custom-designed and produced using additive manufacturing processes. This research develops a patent analysis approach to explore biomedical 3D printing technology trends. First, the method searches for related patents. Second, frequently appearing key terms in patents are extracted as a means to identify key concepts of inventions. Third, in order to structure the domain knowledge, the ontology is created by referring to the relevant key terms and literature. The key terms create indexes used to measure similarities for clustering the patents and sub-technologies. Based on the patent context and dynamic patent concept analysis maps, the evolutionary trends of technology development are depicted. Biomedical 3D printing R&D projects are used as case examples to compare against co-occurring patent evolutions. The proposed patent concept analysis is generalisable for critical decision support of R&D planning and evaluation in any market sector.     

高科技企业的知识产权战略——以清华科技园的中小企业为例

通过问卷调查发现,清华科技园中小企业拥有知识产权的比例较高。从专利的情况看,企业拥有和申请的多是层次较高的发明专利,而且为此付出了一定的专利保护费用,专利应用于产品的比率也比较高。调查和深度访谈同时表明,清华科技园的中小企业高度认同知识产权对创新成果的法律保护效应;但同时也依靠对技术秘密进行内部保护、加快研发进度和提高设计的复杂程度来避免被模仿,从而减小侵权者的盈利空间。     

Publicly-funded R&D programs and survival of patents

I apply a survival model to a detailed data set of Swedish patents to estimate how different financing factors affect the likelihood of patent renewal. Since the owners know more about the patents than potential external financiers, there is a problem of asymmetric information. To overcome this, Sweden has for a long time relied on government support rather than Private Venture Capital (PVC). In the empirical analysis, two kinds of government loans are unbundled. The empirical results show that patents which have received soft government loans in the R&D-phase have a higher probability of expiring than patents without such financing. But patents that have received more market-oriented government loans during the commercialization phase are renewed for as long as other commercialized patents. This finding suggests that rather than bad choices of projects, it is the nature of the contract terms that explains the low renewal of some patents with government financing.     

Lovely but dangerous: The impact of patent citations on patent renewal

What is the impact of patent citations on patent renewal behaviour? Patent citations are commonly used as an indicator of technology spillovers. For cited patents, therefore, patent citations have a potentially ambiguous impact. On the one hand, patent citations may indicate a scientific breakthrough, a high value of the cited patent and therefore a long survival period. On the other hand, patent citations may indicate competing innovations that render the cited patent obsolete. By discriminating patents by technology field, it is demonstrated that patents that receive citations across technology fields survive longer than other patents. Patents that receive citations within the same technology field lapse earlier.     

Do complex inventions need less international patent protection?

I show that very complex inventions stay outside the patent system more often than medium-complexity products. I test this hypothesis using a subset of international patents data. The regressions confirm that patents and technological complexity have an inverted-U shape relation.     

A heuristic procedure to identify the most valuable chain of patent priority network

In this study, we provide support for the argument that patents are at their maximum value at those times when they are under litigation. We develop a heuristic procedure to determine the way in which such patents under litigation form a network of patent family members, and then go on to examine the priority patents involved. We subsequently attempt to develop a simple procedure to further identify both the ‘critical’ and ‘significant’ chains within our proposed patent priority network. We suggest that the ‘critical’ and ‘significant’ chains that are created within the above network provide companies with important information which will ultimately provide them with valuable support for the subsequent decision of their patent portfolio strategies.     

DERIVATIVE IDEAS AND THE VALUE OF INTANGIBLE ASSETS*

We build a general equilibrium model where growth is driven by two invention types: fundamental ideas that cause creative destruction, and derivative ideas that enhance the value of existing inventions. The model provides a new mapping from microeconomic, patent data to aggregate total factor productivity growth and the aggregate value of privately owned knowledge. We show how to measure the frequency of derivative ideas and the rate of creative destruction. We estimate that derivative ideas account for 70–80% of all patents and their presence more than doubles the value of knowledge capital relative to what the measured innovation rate might otherwise imply.     

人工智能算法专利的技术、理论、问题与中国之应对

人工智能算法因技术属性而被美国、欧盟认为是一种发明，但由于其强大的计算能力和逻辑不可知特性而难以被有效规制。对于人工智能算法这一新技术，承袭科技法学的研究思想，采用比较方法，结合创新披露理论与累积创新理论进行文本分析、理论证成与逻辑论证。研究发现：人工智能算法与技术特征结合能够成为一种专利客体，但《中华人民共和国专利法》与《专利审查指南》在应对人工智能算法时存在不足，应对实用性、新颖性、创造性审查规则以及专利公开规则进行适当调适，以改善法律滞后问题。     

Schumpeter,Schumacher and the Greening of Technology

We propose a semantic patent claim analysis that can examine patents for possible infringements and identify which needs to be manually perused. So far, numerous approaches have been devised to systemise this burden, but have not been useful in practice because of a lack of consideration of semi-structure of patent claim data and claim element-based procedure of adjudicating patent infringement. At the heart of our method is a hierarchical keyword vector for representing the dependency relationships among claim elements (as well as unstructured textual information) and a tree matching algorithm for comparing claim elements of patents. A case study of the patents about DNA chip technology shows our method has considerable advantages in terms of accuracy and significance. We believe the suggested method could be employed in various research areas and serve as a starting point for developing more general models.     

服务贸易结构对我国专利数量的影响研究——基于技术溢出效应的角度

实证分析了服务贸易结构对我国专利数量的影响。研究表明,劳动密集型服务贸易对专利数量有负面影响,其弹性系数为-0.026;资本密集型服务贸易和技术知识密集型服务贸易对专利数量有正面影响,其弹性系数分别为0.029和0.058。将专利细分为发明专利、实用新型和外观设计后,从横向上比较,我们发现在对技术含量最高的发明专利的溢出效应中,技术知识密集型服务贸易所占的比重最大;而从纵向上看,在对技术含量最低的外观设计的溢出效应中,这3种服务贸易的溢出效应都要显著大于其对于其它两种专利的溢出效应。