Design Patent Map: An Innovative Measure for Corporative Design Strategies

Abstract:

The design patent map is one of the essential strategic measures for formulating design strategies. Because the design patent is considered less definite than other patent categories, it is relatively difficult to create a design patent map. No study has been discovered in a worldwide search of patent documents or publications that is relevant to design patent maps, proving the innovative nature of this study. The authors have extracted 96 representative works for bicycle frame design patents that were published from 1992 to 2003 and have used them as the study samples. To ensure precise interpretation of the technical data of bicycle frames and to create the design patent map, the authors have interviewed 11 design patent examiners who have an average of 10 years of experience in patent examination, and are currently working in the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office. Based on the matrix for the available patenting capability and the degree of need for patents, the authors have further converted the design patent map into nine feasibly specific design strategies: (1) overall seizure, (2) expansion, (3) closing-in, (4) envelopment, (5) dispersion, (6) pincer attack, (7) division, (8) deviation, and (9) abandonment. As a result, enterprises will be able to employ the design patent map developed in this study to customize their own design strategies. Such a strategic measure will soon become a new competitive edge for enterprises with the arrival of the knowledge economy era.     

Searching the Patent Space

The Patent Space is a model to explain different kinds of patent searches in an illustrative and comprehensible way to laymen in the field of patents and patent searches, e.g. to customers like R + D staff or members of the Board. The most important kinds of patent searches are shown as examples of the applications of the ‘Patent Space’ concept.     

Patent market dynamics: In view of the business model of non-practicing entities

The emergence of Non-Practicing Entities (“NPEs”) influences patent market dynamics. Based on a database of NPE activities from 1996 to 2010, this paper attempts to investigate these influences in view of NPEs' heterogeneity. We found NPEs with prominent R&D involvements can integrate knowledge from the innovation and patent markets, and might therefore generate valuable patents and facilitate effective technology transfer. Hence, when compared with NPEs without any R&D involvement, R&D-performing NPEs appeared able to monetize their patents without resorting to excessive litigation. Thus, different NPEs could exert different influences and drive patent market dynamics in their own respective ways.     

SME tailor-designed patent portfolio analysis

The management of patents is acknowledged to be closely correlated to a company’s profits. Thus, evaluation of patent portfolios is an essential task for companies producing or depending on technology-related products. While global players and consultants already have considerable experience in this field, no tool has so far been available that meets SME requirements. The Innovation and Patent-Centre at the Chamber of Commerce in Hamburg, a German think tank for patent management, has now developed a tool specially suited for SMEs. The article describes the methodology of the tool and compares it to other state-of-the-art tools. The tool gives an easy-to-understand overview for personnel with different professional backgrounds and facilitates strategic cross-functional discussions. Field tests carried out with SMEs in different industry sectors and with varying patent portfolio sizes and structures have shown good results.     

Classifying technology patents to identify trends: Applying a fuzzy-based clustering approach in the Turkish textile industry

Economic and technological advances have dramatically changed trends in capital investment. As a result, conventional businesses are at risk of being replaced with businesses that embrace new technology and trends. It is essential to identify and act on business opportunities as they appear within these new trends. This paper introduces an approach that uses patent count data to discover technology trends through a fuzzy-based clustering methodology. Technologies are classified into three types—trendy, classic, and dated—that are identified using K-means clustering. This methodology has been tested using textile patents retrieved from the on-line database of the Turkish Patent Institute. As a result, the most promising sub-sectors in the Turkish textile industry can be determined.     

Legal Validity Metrics for Patent Offices and Law Firms – Recycling of Patent Court Appeal Decisions for Quality Management

In all relevant patent systems an adversely affected party has the possibility to appeal the patent office's decision in front of a patent court or Board of Appeal (BoA). Within a European context, the EPO is, in a way, even engaging in de facto competition with national patent offices. As an example, the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) provides quasi identical patent products and offers the same kind of legal recourse to the German patent court (BPatGer) for these products. Both offices offer an opposition procedure which is open for appeal, and also in the case of a refusal, both offices offer the possibility of appeals. Thus, the EPO Boards of Appeal are engaged in making decisions every year on around 2000 cases and, e.g., the BPatGer on 600 cases regarding the legal validity of the first instance's work. It is thus remarkable that, so far, nobody has systematically included the work of the patent courts in a statistical legal validity evaluation in the context of the Patent & Trademark Offices' (PTOs') quality assurance systems.Since there is obviously a need to establish a common standard for the comparison of first and second instance legal teachings in patent law, a methodology for comparative legal validity analysis is proposed in this paper. I have tested and optimised the approach while working as a project manager at the European Patent Office, based on analysis of 2300 appeal decisions from seven annual batches.     

Blockchain patent landscaping: An expert based methodology and search query

The present study is concerned with the emergence of Blockchain related technologies in terms of patenting activity. Blockchain has captured the attention of the public and research has intensified in this field over the last few years, making it a highly interesting topic of study for a patent analysis in order to obtain insight into the developments of this emerging technology. In this paper we present a unique methodology and exhaustive search strategy for identifying Blockchain patent documents by using a combination of specific keywords and patent classifications. This query was built in cooperation with subject matter experts of the European Patent Office (EPO). Our keyword set was then analysed by relevance and was prioritised. The set of specific relevant patent classifications was furthermore combined with keywords in order to exclude false positives. With our methodology we present an exhaustive query for retrieving a highly relevant dataset of Blockchain related patents, extracted from the EPO databases that can be used for patent landscaping exercises or any other bibliometric analysis. In a case study we applied the search strategy to analyse worldwide Blockchain patenting from 2008 till 2018. The results are presented in this paper.     

The Patent Asset Index – A new approach to benchmark patent portfolios

Patent metrics are increasingly used to assess the competitive position of technology-oriented firms. Patent rankings and patent scoreboards are popular methods to benchmark patent portfolios of firms against each other. Existing rankings, however, have methodological limitations that significantly reduce the meaningfulness of these benchmarks for managers, investors and other stakeholders. In this paper, we develop a new benchmarking methodology that overcomes limitations of existing approaches and offers a more accurate assessment of a firm’s patent portfolio vis-à-vis its competitors. Firms are ranked according to the Patent Asset Index, which is derived from a set of newly developed patent indicators. These indicators are empirically validated and reflect more accurately the value of patents. We apply the new benchmarking method in the global chemical industry and contrast our findings with those of other existing patent portfolio rankings.     

基于多属性的专利知识表征与组织

针对专利知识传统获取方式中存在的技术领域局限,利用矛盾、物质-场、功能、发明原理、标准解和效应等6种创新属性构建专利知识多属性表征模型;每种创新属性均采用对应的属性层次树进行多层次描述,并由此提出了基于多属性的专利知识多层次组织策略及算法流程;在此基础上,给出了基于该模型的应用框架.通过上述方法构建得到基于多属性多层次的本地专利库,从多个属性角度对专利知识进行综合表征,并支撑不同层次专利知识的获取.从而,打破了技术领域的局限,促进跨学科、跨领域专利知识的快速、有效获取,有利于激发设计人员进行类比迁移.最后,通过微纳空心镍球制备方法的改进示例说明该模型的可行性.     

Patent portfolios of European wind industry: New insights using citation categories

This study explores the use of citation categories assigned by patent examiners to study overlap of patent portfolios among top wind power firms. Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) is used to obtain a sample of wind industry patents. CPC is shown to be better than the International Patent Classification for identifying patents relevant to the wind power industry. Results show high inter-firm citation among the top wind industry players that can suggest concentration of innovation. The results can be useful for patent analysts, technology managers and policy makers.     

金刚石膜技术研究开发进展——专利文献分析

金刚石膜具有特别优异的性能,在高技术领域有着极为广泛的应用。本文采集1985年到2008年6月世界金刚石膜技术专利文献,并对其发展脉络和竞争格局进行定量和定性分析,揭示出国际上金刚石膜技术已处于较成熟阶段,工具级、热沉级金刚石膜产品已进入实用阶段,光学级和器件级金刚石膜技术尚未成熟;美国、日本技术实力占优势;德国、美国、日本市场被看好;不同应用领域竞争态势差异很大;通过引证分析得出了相关领域的核心的基础专利。     

Analysis of the patent cooperation network in global artificial intelligence technologies based on the assignees

Studying the distribution of the patent cooperation networks from the perspective of assignees provides a very important reference to improve the analysis of the market situation, master the layout of industrial technology and seek partners or mergers and acquisitions. This study uses the Derwent patent database and the patent metric approach to investigate the cooperative network structure of the assignees. The overall patent output in the artificial intelligence field on a global scale exhibited a rapid growth, and the proportion of cooperative patents significantly increased; the cooperation structure between the assignees was loose, and the innovation efficiency was low.     

Patent co-citation networks of Fortune 500 companies

This paper provides an overview of the progression of technology structure based on patent co-citation networks. Methods of patent bibliometrics, social network analysis and information visualization are employed to analyze patents of Fortune 500 companies indexed in Derwent Innovations Index, the largest patent database in the world. Based on the co-citation networks, several main technology groups are identified, including Chemicals, Petroleum Refining, Motor Vehicles, Pharmaceuticals, Electronics, etc. Relationships among the leading companies and technology groups are also revealed.     

Measuring patent quality: A claim and search report approach

This paper presents a new prospective metric for assessing the novelty and inventiveness of patents. It does this by using initial patent search reports and examiner's intuition about the impact of adverse citations on patent claim survival. The paper then demonstrates the metric by evaluating the quality of Switzerland's national patent stock using a selection model, finding that between 84 and 90% of the country's national patents would likely not survive examination at the European Patent Office. In doing so, it contributes to the larger literature on patent assessment, underscores the relevance of patent strategy in the observed characteristics of patents, and removes some of the ambiguity in the academic literature about backward citations.     

The prevalence of weak patents in the United States: A new method to identify weak patents and the implications for patent policy

The presence of patents with dubious validity (i.e., weak patents) has been one of the prominent patent policy issues with undesirable consequences in innovation. The present study empirically examines the prevalence of weak patents in the United States and whether or not the current patent system is capable of correcting weak patent issues. To this end, we propose a new method to identify weak patents by using patent citation information in conjunction with the textual similarity between citing and cited patents. Our method, along with a series of internal validation measures, shows that 13% of U.S. patents filed from 2001 to 2010 are weak patents. By applying this new method, we find that patent owners build a patent portfolio around a weak patent by developing subsequent inventions more than they do for a non-weak patent. Our further analysis finds that a weak patent is more or equally likely to be retained by the patent owner than a non-weak patent. Our findings suggest that patent owners have an incentive to invest in maintaining and appropriating weak patents, and thus, the current patent system is incapable of self-correcting weak patent issues.     

The persistence of worthless patents?

The U.S. patent system requires owners to pay renewal fees at the four, eight, and twelve-year points of the patent's life of twenty years. Previous studies of renewal rates for patents granted over 1981–1991 and 2001–2004 show only around half of the patents were renewed by the twelfth year—leading some scholars to refer to this majority of patents as ‘worthless’. Much has changed in the world since patent renewal fees began in 1981, however. This paper investigates whether patent renewal rates changed correspondingly. Among those changes, the sheer volume of patents increased substantially, creating a challenge for collating patent data. A web scraper was coded to collect renewal rate data on 2.5 million utility patents issued from 1992 to 2009—the most recent patents for which twelve-year renewal rates are available. We find, somewhat surprisingly, that patent renewal rates are virtually unchanged from several years ago. We present and discuss related data, and present the underlying computer code that patent researchers may find useful for investigating a wide range of topics in the future.     

Patent activity analysis of vibration-reduction control technology in high-speed railway vehicle systems in China

Patent activity in China for vibration-reduction control technology in high-speed railway vehicle systems was analyzed based on a portfolio of 193 patents or applications from the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China official Web-based database and a search of the World Intellectual Property Organization PCT database. Patent activity features such as timing, applicant, technology classification, technical themes, and patents in force were obtained and analyzed. As a further stage of research, patent data on locomotive wheel sets were analyzed by means of a matrix analysis of problems and technologies. The main statistical information and conclusions include estimating the development stage, discovering the distributions of applications and applicants, weighing the roles played by major applications, determining R&D hotspots, and providing a better understanding of domestic patent activities in this field. Policy implications for innovation-related domestic R&D institutions in the technologies under study were proposed based on the analytical results.     

Bennet Woodcroft – Patent information pioneer

Bennet Woodcroft was the first technical expert in the 19th century GB Patent Office and was also an engineer, patentee, patent agent, university professor, librarian, museum collector and historian of technology. 150 years ago in 1862 he secured 2 early steam engines, the Rocket and Puffing Billy, for what is now the Science Museum in London, UK. The same year were published the patent abridgement volumes that bear his name, a first in the use of patents as a source of technical information. On this anniversary it seems appropriate to reconsider the life of this remarkable man.     

Patent data as indicators of wind power technology development

This paper reports a study into the use of patent application numbers as indicators of technological development in the field of wind power technology. We show that patent information can be used to analyse the evolution and the level of maturity of this particular technology. The data is gained from databases available at the Swedish Patent and Registration Office (PRV). Three different segments of wind power technology; rotor form, regulation and pitch adjusting, are distinguished and maturity in respective parts is compared to the general technological progress.