Are significant inventions more diversified?

This study aims at exploring whether significant inventions are more technologically diversified or have more diverse applications, investigating whether there are any innovation laws existing in R&D activities. Based on technology co-classification analysis, we select patent dataset meets the specific standard from the worldwide patent database named Derwent Innovations Index as sample dataset. Three indicators out of four verify the proposed hypotheses, i.e., significant inventions are more diversified in terms of individual invention. The fourth indicator implies that focusing on some core technology domains maybe better for creating significant inventions when R&D activities are considered as a whole. The results are of great theoretical significance by helping us identifying the diversified characteristic laws of significant inventions; moreover, they are of crucial practical meanings to R&D work and technology innovation activities etc.     

Regional Innovation Measured by Patent Data—Does Quality Matter?

This paper devises a new way of measuring the geographical scope of innovation based on patent data and compares its geographical distribution with that of patents granted and production. Indicators of patent quality are used to form an index of regional innovation, which is argued to be an improvement over patent counts, which are seen as indicators of inventions. Innovations are more concentrated than inventions, which in turn are more concentrated than production, gauged by employment levels. Innovations are, moreover, concentrated to regions with already high production and invention levels. This indicates that the concentration of innovation is understated, as raw patent counts are used to proxy for innovation rather than quality patents. The results further point to the need for revaluing effect of R&D on local innovative activity.     

Validation study: Patent citations as indicators of science and foreign dependence

The purpose of this study was to test whether the distribution of citations from issued U.S. patents could be used to measure the science dependence and the foreign dependence of patented technologies. The citations considered were front page references from U.S. patents citing to U.S. and foreign patents, to research papers and to other publications. Rankings based on the number of citations per patent to the scientific literature were compared to peer rankings of the science dependence of the technologies. Rankings based on the number of citations to foreign origin material, including foreign origin U.S. patents, foreign patents and foreign priority statements, were compared to peer rankings of the foreign dependence of the technological areas.For the analysis a total of 24 technologies were chosen. Twelve of these were judged in advance to be science dependent and twelve were judged in advance to be foreign dependent. A peer group of 19 high level R&D managers was asked to rank all 24 technologies in terms of both their science and their foreign dependence. The bibliometric rankings of the technologies, based on their citations, were then compared with the peer rankings of the technologies.Overall, a high degree of agreement was found between the experts' opinion as to the science and foreign dependence of the areas and the corresponding bibliometric rankings. For example, the eight technologies judged most science dependent by experts averaged 0.92 cites per patent to scientific journal papers, while the eight technologies judged least science dependent had only 0.05 references per patent to journal papers. Similarly, large and statistically significant differences were found in the number of cites to foreign origin material for the eight technologies judged most foreign dependent by the experts when compared with the eight technologies judged least foreign dependent by the experts. These findings provide support for the hypothesis that patent citation data can be used in technological indicators development, and in technological policy analysis. They imply that citation-based location and analysis of science and foreign dependent technologies is a valid research tool when applied to the U.S. patent system.     

References to literature in patent documents: A case study of CSIR in India

Summary The paper examines the use of references by applicants and the examiners in US patent documents by R&D scientists from CSIR in India. It observes that scientists in CSIR use higher inputs of scientific information than the technical information in patenting. The examiners do make their own prior art search and add significantly to the patent and non-patent literature, which is distinctly different from the references given by the R&D scientists from CSIR. It identifies (a) the major disciplines and the sub-disciplines that contribute most of the scientific knowledge, and (b) the countries from where most references to patent literature are made. The applicants cite relatively less recent patent literature and more medium-term patent literature in comparison to citations by examiners. The paper observes that there is scope of improvement in making relevant prior art search, particularly, for patent literature by R&D scientists and in planning and organizing the information support for conducting patentable R&D in CSIR.     

Assessing coreness and intermediarity of technology sectors using patent co-classification analysis: the case of Korean national R&D

Rapid technological advancements and increasing research and development (R&D) costs are making it necessary for national R&D plans to identify the coreness and intermediarity of technologies in selecting projects and allocating budgets. Studies on the coreness or intermediarity of technology sectors have used patent citations, but there are limitations to dealing with patent data. The limitations arise from the most current patents and patents that do not require citations, e.g. Korean patents. Further, few or no studies have simultaneously considered both coreness and intermediarity. Therefore, we propose a patent co-classification based method to measure coreness and intermediarity of technology sectors by incorporating the analytic network process and the social network analysis. Using IPC co-classifications of patents as technological knowledge flows, this method constructs a network of directed knowledge flows among technology sectors and measures the long-term importance and the intermediating potential of each technology sector, despite the limitations of patent-based analyses. Considering both coreness and intermediarity, this method can provide more detailed and essential knowledge for decision making in planning national R&D. We demonstrated this method using Korean national R&D patents from 2008 to 2011. We expect that this method will help in planning national R&D in a rapidly evolving technological environment.     

Exploring the effect of dual use on the value of military technology patents based on the renewal decision

Concerns regarding the high level of research and development (R&D) expenditure on military technology have prompted many nations to pursue a dual-use regime in military R&D. However, the value of dual-use military technology has not yet been quantitatively investigated. We explore whether military technology with a higher level of duality has been more valuable than that with a lower level of duality. We assume that the patent of valuable military technology was renewed until its termination. We retrieve military patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office during 1976–2014 based on their International Patent Classification (IPC) as F41 or F42. Then, we propose three indicators to assess the duality level of them. The first indicator is based on the determination of whether the patented technology is utilizable in both the military and the civilian sectors using its IPC. For the second indicator, we estimate the potential of convergence of a patented technology with various technological fields using the degree of centrality of the IPC’s co-occurrence network. The third indicator is based on ratio of forward citation by the civilian sector over the total number of forward citations as a measurement of technology diffusion toward the civilian sector. Using logistic regression, we found that the first two indicators are positively associated with patent renewal decision, while the last indicator is nonsignificant. The effects of the two significant indicators suggests that military technologies are more valuable when the technology itself can be used in various sectors, including the civilian sector, and can be converged with technologies in different fields. However, the nonsignificant influence of the third variable suggests that the relation between patent value and diffusion effects toward following inventions is not confined to the civilian sector. Our findings provide evidence of the impact of dual-use policies in military R&D.     

Top management team’s innovation-related characteristics and the firm’s explorative R&D: an analysis based on patent data

This study investigates the relationship between characteristics of the firm’s top management team (TMT) and its research and development (R&D) activities. Specifically, this research analyzes how observable characteristics of the TMT, such as functional experiences or educational background, and average tenure affect the firm’s proportion of explorative R&D activities. From the perspective of the upper-echelon theory, we hypothesize that the TMT’s functional experiences with R&D or science or engineering educational backgrounds increase the firm’s tendency towards explorative R&D. Moreover, we propose that the average tenure of TMT members with innovation-related experiences would have a positive moderation effects on these relationships. The hypotheses are tested using a dataset containing biographical information of the TMT members, financial, and patent data of 89 firms in U.S. high-tech industries from 2006 to 2009. Firm’s explorative R&D activities are analyzed using data on patent citations, patent classes, and non-patent references. The empirical analysis shows that the top managers’ educational background in science or engineering as well as their previous functional experiences with R&D have a positive effect on the firm’s explorative innovation activities. We also find that the size of these effects increases with a longer tenure of these TMT members. Our findings provide implications related to the effects of organizational characteristics on the establishment of a R&D strategy and highlight the role of TMT members with innovative experiences in directing a firm’s R&D activities and outcomes.     

The more you spend, the more you get? The effects of R&D and capital expenditures on the patenting activities of biotechnology firms

This paper provides evidence on the mechanisms influencing the patent output of a sample of small and large, entrepreneurial and established biotechnology firms from the input of indirect knowledge acquired from capital expenditures and direct knowledge from in-house R&D. Statistical models of counts are used to analyse the relationship between patent applications and R&D investment and capital expenditures. It focuses on biotechnology in the period 2002–2007 and is based on a unique data set drawn from various sources including the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard, the European Patent Office (EPO), the US Patent and Trademark Office, and the World Intellectual Property Organisation. The statistical models employed in the paper are Poisson distribution generalisations with the actual distribution of patent counts fitting the negative binomial distribution and gamma distribution very well. Findings support the idea that capital expenditures—taken as equivalent to technical change embodied in new machinery and capital equipment—may also play a crucial role in the development of new patentable items from scientific companies. For EPO patents, this role appears even more important than that played by R&D investment. The overall picture emerging from our analysis of the determinants of patenting in biotechnology is that the innovation process involves a well balanced combination of inputs from both R&D and new machinery and capital equipment.     

What is Special about Patent Citations? Differences between Scientific and Patent Citations

The emergence of pattent bibliometrics as a new branch of scientometrics necessitates a deeper understanding of the relationship between patents and papers. As this connection is established through the linkage between patents and research papers, one must have a clear idea of similarities and differences between patent and paper citations. This paper will investigate to what extent one can not only apply bibliometric methods to patents but also extend the existing interpretative framework for citations in research papers to the field of patent citations. After pointing out some parallels in the debates about the nature of citations in patents and scientific articles, the paper outlines those parts of bibliometric theory covering scientific citations that could be relevant to patent citations too. Then it highlights the specialties and peculiarities of patent citations. One major conclusion is that the general nature of a common framework for both scientific and patent citations would severely limit its usefulness, but research on academic citations might still be a great source of inspiration to the study of patent citations.     

Heterogeneous Partners,R&D cooperation and corporate innovation capability: Evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms

In this paper, we examine the differential impact of cooperation with heterogeneous partners on firms' innovation capabilities. We use the number of joint patent applications of Chinese manufacturing firms from 2008 to 2018 to measure cooperation with different types of partners and the number of corporate patents to measure the innovation capability of firms. The results indicate that R&D cooperation with other enterprises, universities, and research institutions all have a significantly positive impact on the innovation capability of enterprises. However, R&D cooperation with universities or research institutions has a higher positive impact on innovation capability than that with other firms. Different internal and external factors moderate the relationship between heterogeneous partners and the innovation capability of firms. Specifically, firms with higher absorptive capacity will benefit more from R&D cooperation with corporate partners. In contrast, in industries with higher market concentration or where firms are at the technological frontier, cooperation with universities will positively impact their innovation capabilities. Further research demonstrates that absorptive capacity has a more positive moderating effect when the cooperation is between firms in the same industry, compared to R&D cooperation between firms in different industries.     

Effective R&D investment planning based on technology spillovers: the case of Korea

This study was performed to discuss an R&D investment planning method based on the technology spillover among R&D fields, from the point of view of technology convergence. The empirical analysis focused on a particular R&D group, such as university departments and specialized research institutes, since local technology combinations are more effective than distant combinations to create a new technology, according to previous research. In addition, worldwide technology competition is increasing, and with the recent convergence of various technologies and industries, strategies for R&D selection and resources allocation of particular R&D groups are becoming increasingly important. The empirical analysis uses a modified Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory method combined with information on patent citations to resolve the latent problems of the existing model, using as an empirical example the case of the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM), specialized in the geology and resources development R&D area. Through the empirical analysis, the KIGAM’s current R&D investment status is considered, and a reasonable R&D investment planning is suggested from the perspective of technology spillover. By using this framework, the magnitude of technology spillover from the R&D investment planning within a particular R&D group can be measured based on objective quantitative data, and the current R&D investment can be compared with recent global trends.     

Identifying technological competition trends for R&D planning using dynamic patent maps: SAO-based content analysis

Patent maps showing competition trends in technological development can provide valuable input for decision support on research and development (R&D) strategies. By introducing semantic patent analysis with advantages in representing technological objectives and structures, this paper constructs dynamic patent maps to show technological competition trends and describes the strategic functions of the dynamic maps. The proposed maps are based on subject-action-object (SAO) structures that are syntactically ordered sentences extracted using the natural language processing of the patent text; the structures of a patent encode the key findings of the invention and expertise of its inventors. Therefore, this paper introduces a method of constructing dynamic patent maps using SAO-based content analysis of patents and presents several types of dynamic patent maps by combining patent bibliographic information and patent mapping and clustering techniques. Building on the maps, this paper provides further analyses to identify technological areas in which patents have not been granted (“patent vacuums”), areas in which many patents have actively appeared (“technological hot spots”), R&D overlap of technological competitors, and characteristics of patent clusters. The proposed analyses of dynamic patent maps are illustrated using patents related to the synthesis of carbon nanotubes. We expect that the proposed method will aid experts in understanding technological competition trends in the process of formulating R&D strategies.     

Competition for funding as an indicator of research competitiveness

Summary Research quality is the cornerstone of modern science, it is used in the understanding of reputational differences among scientific and academic institutions. Traditionally, scientific activity is measured by a set of indicators and well-established bibliometric techniques based on the number of academic papers published in top-ranked journals or on the number of citations of these papers. These indicators are usually critical in measuring differences in research performance, both at individual and at scientific institutional levels. In this paper, we introduce an alternative and complementary set of indicators based on the results of competition for research funding, that aims to enlarge the framework in which research performance has traditionally been measured. Theoretical support for this paper is found in the role that the search for funding plays in the researchers’ credibility cycle as well as in peer review, the basic instrument for the allocation of public R&D funds. Our method analyses the outcomes of the researchers’ struggle for funding, using data from research proposal applications and awards, as the unit of observation, and aggregating them by research institutions to rank them in relative scales of research competitiveness.     

Identifying rapidly evolving technological trends for R&;D planning using SAO-based semantic patent networks

Patents constitute an up-to-date source of competitive intelligence in technological development; thus, patent analysis has been a vital tool for identifying technological trends. Patent citation analysis is easy to use, but fundamentally has two main limitations: (1) new patents tend to be less cited than old ones and may miss citations to contemporary patents; (2) citation-based analysis cannot be used for patents in databases which do not require citations. Naturally, citation-based analysis tends to underestimate the importance of new patents and may not work in rapidly-evolving industries in which technology life-cycles are shortening and new inventions are increasingly patented world-wide. As a remedy, this paper proposes a patent network based on semantic patent analysis using subject-action-object (SAO) structures. SAO structures represent the explicit relationships among components used in a patent, and are considered to represent key concepts of the patent or the expertise of the inventor. Based on the internal similarities between patents, the patent network provides the up-to-date status of a given technology. Furthermore, this paper suggests new indices to identify the technological importance of patents, the characteristics of patent clusters, and the technological capabilities of competitors. The proposed method is illustrated using patents related to synthesis of carbon nanotubes. We expect that the proposed procedure and analysis will be incorporated into technology planning processes to assist experts such as researchers and R&D policy makers in rapidly-evolving industries.     

Using patents and publications to assess R&D efficiency in the states of the USA

Even with the USA spending the largest amounts in R&D, its share in total patent grants worldwide has been declining. This decline is also evident in its share of world scientific publications. These developments have been termed by some as the “American Paradox”. Extant research on R&D efficiency and technological innovation capability has considered the USA as a homogeneous entity and has not focused at the sub-national level. This paper analyses the R&D efficiency of 50 US states and the District of Columbia. R&D efficiency is calculated as the ratio of patents granted and scientific publications to R&D expenditures. Only 14 states out of the 51 regions are found to exhibit positive changes in R&D efficiency between 2004 and 2008. Comparing this performance with that of the BRICS nations over the same period we find that Brazil, India, China and South Korea show significant improvements in R&D efficiency with India taking the lead. This research identifies the states in the US with the highest R&D efficiency and presents benchmarks which can be followed by policy interventions. The paper highlights the importance of conducting analyses of R&D efficiency using patents and publications at the sub-national level for informed policy making.     

The transfer of knowledge from the Spanish public R&D system to the productive sectors in the field of Biotechnology

To determine the capability and resources of the Spanish R & D system to produce knowledge useful for the Biotechnology industries, an analysis of indicators derived from published work, scientific papers cited in US patents and inventions patented, has been carried out. The results show that the number of publications compares well with that of other European countries. The visibility of those publications seems evident as about two thirds of the authors studied have been cited in patents assigned to foreign enterprises, but very few of them have applied for patents. This is analysed in connection with the existing policies.     

The geography of university scientific production in Europe: an exploration in the field of Food Science and Technology

This paper contributes to the literature on the factors explaining the regional university production of science and its quality in the field of Food Science and Technology (FS&T). We hypothesized that the regional quantity of science generated by universities is shaped not only by the amount of research and development (R&D) funds, as the main mainstream literature suggests, but also by the demand for science at the regional level. Furthermore, given the evolutionary nature of knowledge production, we suggest that the number of publications has a significant effect on the quality of scientific research at the regional level. Drawing on a sample of 48,207 scientific papers in FS&T over the period 1998–2010, we first map and examine the regional distribution of science and its quality across Europe-15. Second, we address our hypotheses by specifying several econometric models to identify the factors affecting the quantity and quality of scientific production. Our results show that the regional demand for FS&T—captured by the regional employment in the food and beverage industry—matters for the generation of science. Additionally, our findings support the hypothesis of a positive and significant effect of the production of papers on the scientific quality at the regional level.     

The Albuquerque model and efficiency indicators in national scientific productivity with respect to manpower and funding in science

Due to recession in the world economy there is a trend towards a reduction in growth of R&D expenditure in the G7 countries. At the same time countries like China and Korea are investing more in scientific research. We compare the differences in the inputs to science for different countries and explore the level of efficiency in the output of scientific papers with respect to inputs such as manpower and investment. We find that the EU countries are relatively more efficient than Japan, the USA and also China and Korea so far as the production of papers is concerned. However, if efficiency is considered in terms of patents, Japan Korea and the USA are ahead. We compare our results with Albuquerque’s model linking patent to paper ratios and development, and find significant deviations for some countries. We deduce that there has been a shift from publishing towards patenting in certain countries and link it to high contribution from the business sector to R&D expenditure. Preliminary results of this analysis have been presented in Basu (In Proceedings of the 14th International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI) Conference, 2013).