The coincidence of patent thickets—A comparative analysis

The growth of patent thickets—technology fields that are characterized by a large overlap of rights between different right holders—poses a challenge for innovators. Patent thickets are argued to create strong friction in innovation due to a pronounced potential for holdup. So far, we do not know whether patent thickets coincide in all patent systems or if differences exist that policy makers and managers must take into account when aiming to disentangle and to navigate patent thickets, respectively. To address this gap, we measure patent density of technology fields in the patent systems of the United States, the German patent system governed by the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA), and the European patent system governed by the European Patent Office (EPO). Our comparisons reveal both interesting differences and similarities between the analyzed patent systems. Although the United States and the EPO patent system show similar relative patent density patterns across technology fields, the German patent system strongly differs from the previous two. This implies that such deviations need to be taken into account by policy makers when considering regulatory measures as well as by companies in their intellectual property strategy.     

Assigning Patents to Industries: Tests of the Yale Technology Concordance

We describe a method to predict patent counts disaggregated by industry, using available data on patenting by technology field. This method—the Yale Technology Concordance (YTC)—exploits a data set of patents that have been individually assigned by the Canadian Patent Office to both an industry and a technology field. The procedure for predicting patents by industry is developed as a statistical model so that the standard errors of the predictions can be estimated. The YTC is tested on several subsets of Canadian patents by comparing out-of-sample predictions with industry assignments made by the Canadian Patent Office. We find that the predictions of patents by industry are quite accurate for the subset of patents form US inventors. The prediction errors are much greater for the subset of patents granted or published after 1989. This suggests that the relationship between the technology fields and industries has shifted in a way that the procedure does not capture. Nonetheless, predictions from the YTC do appear to give a reasonably accurate picture of the pattern of patenting by industry.     

Commercializing inventions resulting from university research: Analyzing the impact of technology characteristics on subsequent business models

One of the key challenges in commercializing inventions arising from academic research is deciding on an appropriate business model for transferring the invention from the academic world to the commercial world. However, there is little empirical evidence to suggest which model to choose. This study attempts to address this gap by examining how characteristics of technologies affect the selection of business models.We consider four characteristics of technology: patent or other legal protection, specialized complementary assets, commercial uncertainty and technological dynamism. We relate these characteristics to the choice of three basic business models for commercializing inventions. Data for this study were gathered for 42 commercialized inventions.We found evidence that greater patent or other legal protection for the technology was associated with a greater likelihood that the technology was commercialized by transferring limited rights to the technology to existing firms. We also found evidence that greater commercial uncertainty was associated with a greater likelihood that the technology was commercialized by creation of a new firm or transfer of the rights to the technology to an existing firm. We did not find evidence of a relationship between the importance of specialized complementary assets or technological dynamism and the business model used.     

Development of patent roadmap based on technology roadmap by analyzing patterns of patent development

Recently, patent forecasting and planning has been emphasized as an essential process in the strategic management of technology because well-planned patents will make larger profits and occupy dominant positions first. Thus, this paper aims to suggest the concept and process of a patent roadmap based on a technology roadmap and patterns of patent development. For this, first, ontology of technology is generated to structure the characteristics of technology based on the existing technology roadmap and then patents are collected from a patent database. Second, collected patents are grouped by similarities based on vectors of extracted keywords and grouping results are classified by TEMPEST. In this step, keywords extracted from the previous phase are matched with TEMPEST individually and patent groups are categorized in accordance with high relevance between representative keywords in patent groups and core keywords in each category of TEMPEST. Third, the patterns of patent development are identified for each patent group and categorized by two types – structural and temporal patterns. Consequently, extracted patterns serve as evidence of patent planning, and the patent roadmap is drawn with the technology layer composed of the technology roadmap and the patent layer that each group is mapped on. The proposed approach is illustrated by the case of the transparent AMOLED display. The patent roadmap will enable managers to establish patenting strategies in order to achieve a valuable core patent that has the potential to become a business model, yielding good returns in the long term.     

浅谈专利翻译规范

专利文献是一种非常重要的技术资料,是一座取之不尽用之不竭的"技术宝库"。专利文献既具有科学性,又是一种具有法律效力的文件,它是一种技术与法律的结合物。基于这两大特点,专利文献有着较为固定的书写格式和表达方式,这就需要我们在翻译专利文献时,必须达到专利文献的翻译规范。这是避免传达错误信息的重要保障,同时也是输出高质量译文的首要前提。     

The interplay between technology characteristics,R&D internationalisation,and new product introduction: Empirical evidence from the energy conservation sector

Developing marketable products based on proprietary technologies is the key to success in many firms, but it is still a big challenge. Factors explaining when technologies are more likely to lead to a marketable product are not fully understood yet. This gap calls for further research on this important topic. The present paper addresses this issue by focusing on specific characteristics of technologies - i.e., their nature as breakthrough technologies and their generality - which can be considered as suitable predictors of new product introduction (NPI). Specifically, we study if and how these characteristics affect the likelihood of NPI. Moreover, in our research model, we argue that the effects of technology characteristics on NPI are contingent upon the degree of a firm's R&D internationalisation. We examine this moderating firm-level factor in a cross-level study design. We develop several hypotheses and test them with objective patent and novel trademark data. In detail, the analyses are based on a unique and longitudinal sample of 11,385 patents and 1,783 trademarks registered at the USPTO in the energy conservation sector by 696 different companies. By adopting hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), we reveal that the likelihood of NPI is positively related to the breakthrough nature of technologies; this effect turns negative when the level of breakthrough nature is very high. Instead, technological generality has a negative influence on NPI. Finally, the degree to which firms internationalise their R&D activities negatively moderates those relationships.     

奇虎360科技有限公司专利管理地图分析

专利战略对于企业取得经济利益、获取竞争优势有着重要作用。本文运用专利管理地图分析方法,对奇虎360科技有限公司的专利类型、专利年代趋势、技术领域构成、主要发明人和主要竞争对手进行了分析:奇虎科技专利申请以发明专利为主,专利申请质量较高;主要集中在电学和物理两大技术领域;奇虎360发明人研发实力较强,其专利技术生命周期正处在由发展期向成熟期转变阶段。在互联网安全专利竞争领域,奇虎科技相对直接竞争对手占较大优势。文章最后对未来360专利战略的专利申请数量质量、专利人力资源管理、专利竞争对手监控、以及应对专利侵权纠纷方面提出相关建议。     

Little Firms and Big Patents: A Model of Small‐Firm Patent Signaling

Patent strategies of small technology‐intensive firms are difficult to explain with standard incentive arguments based on intellectual property rights. This paper develops a rationale for patent filing as a disclosure strategy. We develop a two‐sender signaling game to study patenting incentives of two technology start‐ups to file in a large‐scale patent system with the goal to attract a user firm. Both start‐ups may decide to invest in costly modification of their patent application before filing. The paper identifies a separating equilibrium in which the high‐quality inventor files and so separates from its technology competitor. Of particular interest is the study of pooling and semi‐separating equilibria, as well as the impact of subsidies. We find that a higher quality of a country's inventions, reflected in the possible innovative steps and thus in higher expected profits for foreign user firms, may increase the chance of the relatively lower‐quality inventor to enter international technology markets.     

The role of environmental innovation through the technological proximity in the implementation of the sustainable development

This paper explores the relationship between a firm's knowledge sourcing strategy and green innovation. The data are taken from Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development REGPAT database, February 2016, relative to the European Patent Office firms' patent applications published up to December 2015. The study contributes to the literature by focusing on the moderating role of integration between different activities related to environmental performance on the relationship between knowledge sources and green innovations. The results from 240 firms indicate a shift in the focus from internal knowledge to external knowledge when developing environmental innovations. Government policies promoting more knowledge complementarity and coordination between environmental fields will help to promote more knowledge transfer, allowing more sustainable development.     

美国专利制度危机及其对中国专利制度建设的启示

20世纪80年代以来,随着美国专利系统运作方式发生的两次重大变化,以及与专利有关的立法的调整,美国专利制度正日益受到美国各界广泛的质疑和指责,正陷入其成立建立以来最严重的信任危机。审视此次危机将有助于我们正确认识知识产权保护和创新的关系,从而为我国专利制度建设指明正确的方向。     

Navigating a product landscape for technology opportunity analysis: A word2vec approach using an integrated patent-product database

Technology opportunity analysis has been the subject of many prior studies, although most of them have focused on discovering new technology ideas in a single narrow domain. This study proposes a product landscape analysis to identify product areas (i.e., potential technology opportunities) across multiple domains that firms can enter based on the technological capabilities embodied in their existing products. First, text mining is used to construct an integrated patent-product database from the United States patent and trademark database. Second, word2vec is employed to construct a product landscape as a vector space model where products with similar technological bases are located close to each other while maintaining the technological relationships. Third, given a product of interest, potential technology opportunities are identified via (1) automatic opportunity analysis that identifies product areas with technological bases similar to those of the product; and (2) interactive opportunity analysis that finds product areas based on experts’ queries modifying the technological bases of the product (i.e., addition and subtraction). Finally, ten quantitative indexes are developed to explore the implications of the potential technology opportunities identified. The case study covering 3,016,315 patents and 160,832 products confirms that the proposed approach is valuable as a creativity support tool for technology opportunity analysis in the era of convergence.     

基于专利生命周期的技术创新潜力分析——以广西汽车发动机技术为例

文章阐述了运用专利技术生命周期分析方法度量技术创新潜力的可行性和适用性,并以广西汽车发动机为例,在专利申请情况进行检索和分析的基础上,通过新技术特征系数、技术生长率、技术成熟系数和技术衰老系数等指数的测算,对技术创新潜力进行定性和定量分析,分析结果认为广西汽车发动机技术处于比较旺盛的生命阶段,在今后较长时期内存在着很大的创新空间和潜力。     

基于博弈的专利诉讼与交叉许可决策研究

随着企业研发能力和知识产权保护意识的逐渐增强,越来越多的企业通过建立专利壁垒来保证自身的持续竞争力与市场地位。"专利丛林"的现象导致企业进行技术创新以及新产品的开发举步维艰。为了节省成本,科技企业之间相互的专利侵权现象时有发生。面对相互的专利侵权现象,有的企业运用专利诉讼的手段与对方发起"专利大战"以维持自身的竞争优势,也有的企业通过专利的交叉许可协议,与对方建立长期的专利合作关系。本文通过构建博弈模型,研究了企业进行专利诉讼以及交叉许可的选择决策的机理。     

论实施新专利法在推动广西经济发展中的作用

我国专利制度的不断发展和完善,对促进经济发展起到了积极作用。文章对2008年12月第三次修改并于2009年10月1日起施行的《中华人民共和国专利法》（以下简称新专利法）部分内容进行解读,重点分析新专利法对推动广西经济发展的作用。     

湖南省重点实验室专利战略管理

重点实验室的专利战略管理是指利用国家法律框架下的专利制度,在专利研究、开发、申请、经营等方面的对策与方法,为促进湖南省的科技发展和科技创新,文章提出了湖南省重点实验室实施专利战略管理的建议。     

Identifying and evaluating strategic partners for collaborative R&D: Index-based approach using patents and publications

Identifying and selecting appropriate strategic partners have been the subject of many previous studies: but most have dealt with partner selection that has relied heavily on experts' judgements: the value of a literature-based quantitative approach as a source of technology intelligence has seldom been addressed. This paper therefore aims to develop a systematic framework to guide strategic partner selection, taking a literature-based approach. Reviewing the factors that can lead to successful R&D partnerships to develop partner selection criteria, we designed 14 indexes – grouped into four major categories – to reflect desirable partner characteristics, and used the literature data to suggest a framework for prioritising potential partners. As data sources, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the ISI Web of Science databases are adopted for patent analysis and publication analysis, respectively. This research applied the framework to identify strategic R&D partners for Korean firms and found that the use of literature data enabled a wide ranging search for potential partners and the quick analysis of their characteristics, with results that provided objective evidence for selection decisions. It also investigated the relative importance of literature databases and that of the four decision criteria by industry, and examined the relationships between the indexes to improve the application of the framework. The suggested framework is expected to be valuable as a complementary tool for decision-making about R&D collaboration.     

Are patent fees effective at weeding out low‐quality patents?

The paper investigates whether patent fees are an effective mechanism to deter the filing of low‐quality patent applications. The study analyzes the effect on patent quality of the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1982, which resulted in a substantial increase in patenting fees at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Results from a series of difference‐in‐differences regressions suggest that the increase in fees led to a weeding out of low‐quality patents. About 10% of patents in the lowest quality decile were filtered out, with the effect concentrated in the patents of firms whose overall patent portfolio was medium to large (more than 20 patents). The study has strong policy implications in the current context of concerns about declines in patent quality.     

Patent indicators for macroeconomic growth—the value of patents estimated by export volume

This paper examines the linkage between patenting and export performance for selected countries at the level of technology fields. Some empirical studies show considerable correlation between the patenting behavior of countries and their economic success in international markets. Adding to the existing literature, the aim of this analysis is to assess whether the indicators that are supposed to reflect patent value—such as patent citations or family size—have any explanatory power in estimating the export value of countries by technology fields.     

企业专利信息分析与专利战略工作

专利信息集技术信息、经济信息和法律信息于一体,对专利信息进行检索、统计、分析、整合的具有战略性特征的专利工作对企业的创新发展尤为重要.     

知识产权保护与中国工业创新能力

利用省际大中型工业企业面板数据,考察了知识产权保护对我国工业创新能力的影响。结果显示,知识产权保护与新产品和专利产出均存在倒U形关系,但超过95%的样本位于拐点左侧,强化知识产权保护能够加快我国绝大多数地区工业创新能力的提升。同时,知识产权保护对发明专利的促进作用要显著大于实用新型和外观设计专利。对其影响渠道的进一步研究还表明,强化知识产权保护在激励企业自主研发、提高国外技术引进效果、促进FDI知识溢出等均发挥了正向作用,并且知识产权保护对企业自主研发的引致作用在发明专利中尤为明显。本文从多个层面证实了知识产权保护在当前我国工业创新能力特别是核心技术能力提升中的积极作用。