Worldwide Nanotechnology Development: A Comparative Study of USPTO, EPO, and JPO Patents Yiling Lin Advisor: Hsinchun Chen Dec, 2006

Agenda Introduction Research Design Basic Bibliographic Analysis Content Map Analysis Citation Network Analysis Conclusions

Introduction Nanotechnology A fundamental technology. Critical for a nation’s technological competence. Its R&D status attracts various communities’ interest. Patent A technology document An open source Strictly structured

Introduction Patent Offices in the World USPTO, EPO and JPO issue nearly 90 percent of the world’s patents (Kowalski et al., 2003). Language issue.

Introduction Research Objectives Assess the nanotechnology development status represented by USPTO, EPO, and JPO patents. Compare and contrast the differences in the nanotechnology patents in the three repositories.

Research Design Patent parsing Data acquisition USPTO database USPTO database Research status analysis Topic coverage Collected by keywords Content map Citation Network Patent publication Patent importance/ strength of a repository Patent importance/ strength of a repository Number of patents Average number of cites EPO database EPO database JPO database JPO database Knowledge diffusion Collected by keywords JPO dataset EPO dataset USPTO dataset Patent status checking EPO+JPO patent JPO patent Patent status

Basic Bibliographic Analysis Patent publication Number of patents by country in each year Number of patents by country group in each year Number of patents by assignee in each year Number of patents by technology field in each year Patent importance / strength Average number of cites by country Average number of cites by assignee Average number of cites by technology field

Content Map Analysis Documents Topic Similarity Keyword Extraction Topics Visualization Arizona Noun Phraser Topic Relation Analysis SOM Algorithm

Topic Map Interface

Content Map Analysis (USPTO) USPTO Content Map ( )

Content Map Analysis (USPTO) NEW REGION USPTO Content Map ( ) NEW REGION USPTO Content Map ( ) NEW REGION

Findings –Content Map (USPTO) From 1976 to 1989, the major research topics of USPTO patents included: “carbon atoms,” “laser beams,” “electrodes,” “coating composition,” “pharmaceutical compositions,” “electromagnetic radiation,” and “aqueous solutions.” From 1990 to 1999, “pharmaceutical compositions,” “laser beams,” “aqueous solutions,” and “carbon atoms” were still major research topics. New research topics included: “thin films,” “nucleic acids,” and “semiconductor devices.” From 2000 to 2004, “laser beams,” “thin film,” “semiconductor devices,” “pharmaceutical compositions,” “aqueous solutions,” “nucleic acids,” and “carbon atoms” were still major research topics. New topics included: “optical fibers,” “light emitting device,” “carbon nanotubes,” “barrier layers.”

Citation Network Analysis Analytical unit levels: countries, Institutions technology fields. The top 100 links of each network are used to create the core networks. Graphviz, provided by AT&T Labs (Gansner and North, 2000) (available at: Knowledge flow For example, a link from “Country A” to “Country B” means that country A’s patents had been cited by country B’s patents and the number beside the link is the total number of these citations.

Citation Network Analysis- USPTO Countries

Citation Network Analysis- USPTO Technology Fields (IPC)

Citation Network Analysis- USPTO Institutions

Conclusions The number of patents had an increasing trend. In recent years, several countries had a significant growth in all repositories. The USA filed much more patents in USPTO than in other repositories, which shows the country effect in patent filing. In both datasets, the US filed the majority of patents. The European group countries filed similar numbers of patents in both USPTO and EPO, which shows the significant attraction of the USPTO repository to the researchers. In USPTO and EPO, the patents published in the top technology fields showed upward trends, while those in the JPO dataset did not. The top 3 technology fields in USPTO also belongs to the top 10 lists of EPO and JPO. EPO and JPO top 10 lists share many common technology fields.

Conclusions From the content map analysis, USPTO patents cover more topic areas than EPO and JPO. Many of the EPO and JPO topics were related to research tools/methods. Many of the EPO topics were related to physics research. USPTO topics covered research in physics, biomedicine, and electronics. The USPTO repository and EPO repository have different focuses and strengths in different technology fields, in terms of the cites per patent measure. In the institution citation network, USPTO institutions have more self-citations than EPO institutions.

Future Directions Study the inter-citation relationships to identify the knowledge diffusion process between repositories. Study the collaboration of the inventors in the three repositories. Extend research framework to include more patent offices’ documents.

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