Explore the vast range of titles available.

PurposeIn this article, the ideas and methods behind the “patent-paper citation” are scrutinised by following the intellectual and technical development of approaches and ideas in early work on patentometrics. The aim is to study how references from patents to papers came to play a crucial role in establishing a link between science and technology.Design/methodology/approachThe study comprises a conceptual history of the “patent paper citation” and its emergence as an important indicator of science and technology interaction. By tracing key references in the field, it analyses the overarching frameworks and ideas, the conceptual “hinterland”, in which the approach of studying patent references emerged.FindingsThe analysis explains how interest in patents – not only as legal and economic artefacts but also as scientific documents – became evident in the 1980s. The focus on patent citations was sparked by a need for relevant and objective indicators and by the greater availability of databases and methods. Yet, the development of patentometrics also relied on earlier research, and established theories, on the relation between science and technology.Originality/valueThis is the first attempt at situating patentometrics in a larger societal and scientific context. The paper offers a reflexive and nuanced analysis of the “patent-paper citation” as a theoretical and historical construct, and it calls for a broader and contextualised understanding of patent references, including their social, legal and rhetorical function.

Purpose This study aims to propose a methodology by integrating three approaches, namely, internal core technology, external knowledge flow and industrial technology development to help companies improve their decision-making quality for technology planning and enhance their research and development (R&D) portfolio efficiency. Design/methodology/approach The primary focus of this study is thin-film solar technology and patent data is retrieved from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database. This study presents a methodology based on the proposed integrated analysis method, constructed with patent indicators, centrality analysis of social networks and main path analysis. Findings The results of this study can be itemized as – the core technological competency: companies involved in two specific technology fields have lower strength in R&D portfolio than leading companies with single-core technology. Knowledge flow: most companies in a network are knowledge producers/absorbers and technological development: diverse source and sink nodes were identified in the global main path during 1997-2003, 2004-2010 and 2011-2017. Research limitations/implications Latecomer companies can emulate leaders’ innovation and enhance their technological competence to seek niche technology. Using the global main path, companies monitor outdated technologies that can be replaced by new technologies and aid to plan R&D strategy and implement appropriate strategic decisions avoiding path dependency. Originality/value The knowledge accumulation process helps in identifying the change of position and the role of companies; understanding the trend of industrial technology knowledge helps companies to develop new technology and direct strategic decisions. The novelty of this research lies in the integrated approach of three methods aiding industries to find their internal core technical competencies and identify the external position in the competitive market.

Following financial technologies’ rapid growth, innovations and R&D are entering the insurance industry. The development of technologies such as smart sensors, artificial intelligence, and mobile technologies offers potential for disruptive innovations to revolutionise the industry. This paper identifies the key technological adoptions and R&D in the field of InsurTech considering the sources of innovations and actors through patentometrics. It analyses the main areas of granted patents and patent applications in this field. The present literature provides both quantitative and qualitative information about key areas, investments, and further financial data in the field, but a thorough patent analysis is not yet available. This study also contributes to the adoption and innovation theories. It outlines a new angle by examining the sources of innovations and technological adoptions through both academic and professional lenses. Patentometrics helps to identify the technological clusters and main actors globally. Patent applications can reveal potential future focus points. Hence, the analysis of patents can provide a more specific outlook than an extrapolation of historical financial data. In addition, interviews with experts are conducted to justify the results of the patentometrics and to collect further information. The results show how, in a low-tech environment, innovations occur with the support of third parties and industry-specific R&D and organisations. Interestingly, most adopters and innovators are within the insurance industry. Analysing InsurTech patent applications leads to the identification of R&D activities in the vehicle, health, and property insurance areas. These areas can represent the future trends of innovations in the InsurTech industry.

In the context of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, inter-regional international cooperation is facing fierce competition and sustainable development pressure in domestic, geopolitical, and global industrial chains and that a rational division of labor and coordination of cooperative innovation subjects, key technology nodes, and technology subgroups are of great importance to improve and upgrade the industrial and supply chain cooperation of China–Japan–ROK, as well as to enhance the efficiency of cooperation and innovation. This study uses the patented technical cooperation and innovation dual network structure analysis model and social network analysis (SNA) to analyze the dual network relationship and evolution characteristics of patent technology cooperation and innovation at different stages, based on data from 5912 invention patents applied by China, Japan, and ROK. We find that the China–Japan–ROK patent technology collaboration network is unmatched in size, and the areas of cooperation are expanding on a daily basis. However, the network’s innovation activities have not yet stabilized, and there is still room for collaborative innovation among enterprises to grow and evolve. Multinational corporations in Japan and South Korea have occupied the network’s core position at various times, forming seven key innovation groups with high-tech enterprises such as Samsung Display, Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor, NEC, and LEKIN as core nodes. Patents such as H01L, G02F, H04N, H01M, and G02B dominate the key technology nodes and technology subgroups, indicating that high-tech patents such as electronic information technology, semiconductors, displays, and automobile manufacturing are the primary areas of cooperation and innovation between China, Japan, and South Korea.

[Purpose/Significance] The livestock and poultry industry in China is in an important period of accelerating transformation. Understanding the research status of the related technology has certain reference significance for the development of the livestock and poultry industry. [Method/Process] This paper takes three main directions of the technology in the field of livestock and poultry farming facilities, cage, feeding and environment control, as the research object, and uses patentometrics to analyze the development trend, technology branch, applicant and key patents at all stages. [Results/Conclusions] The development of cage, feeding and environment control technology has experienced three stages simultaneously: germination stage, fluctuating development stage and rapid development stage, and the current application volume is on the rise in a straight line. Technology applications in this field mainly come from enterprises, and there are obvious differences in technology layout among enterprises. In recent years, the number of key patents from China has increased significantly. The research on cage technology devices is focused on technologies such as excrement and urine removal and floor covering. Research on feeding is more than that on drinking water, and both focus on automation equipment. Environment control focuses on waste treatment , air conditioning and house cleaning and scrubbing.

•Performing a scientometric analysis of papers, clinical trials and patents in needle-free insulin injection over the past 49 years (1974–2022).•Revealing that basic research and clinical trials in this field mainly involved therapy, penetration, safety, absorption, and pharmacokinetics.•Illustrating that drive mechanisms and needle-free injection devices were the core patent technologies in this field.•Identifying that patent technology innovation dominated the development and innovation of insulin needle free injection. Needle-free jet injection has to some extent improved the quality of life of patients with diabetes, but it has not been widely used. Therefore, we analyzed articles, clinical trials, and patents of needle-free insulin injection to (1) perform a systematic and comprehensive analysis of scientific research and technology innovation in needle-free insulin injection during the past 49 years (1974 to 2022) and (2) identify the status of scientific research and technology innovation, their limitations, and future trends. With a new perspective, we use scientometric tools, including co-word and word frequency analyses, text mining, and cluster network analysis, to provide a scientometric analysis and visualization of articles, clinical trials, and patents related to needle-free insulin injection delivery applications. Patent innovation in this field was more active than clinical research, and clinical research prevailed over basic research. Basic research and clinical trials in this field mainly involved therapy, penetration, tolerability, absorption, and pharmacokinetic properties. Drive mechanisms and needle-free injection devices were the core patent technologies in this field. Although needle-free insulin injection has been under development for decades, its full potential has not yet been reached; needle-free injection technology is still in the growth stage. The field of needleless insulin injection is dominated by patent technology innovation.

Technology opportunity discovery (TOD) is an important technique to help fuel cell vehicle (FCV) firms keep market advantage and sustainable development. Under fierce competition in the new energy industry, there is an urgent necessity for innovative TOD methods to effectively identify technology opportunities for FCV firms. This study proposes a structured TOD framework with a multi-level identification process. Based on technology portfolio analysis, it fully integrates the firm’s technology level analysis, technology potential analysis and patent novelty analysis. A series of techniques such as LDA (latent Dirichlet allocation), MDS (multidimensional scaling) and LOF (local outlier factor) are also applied in the framework. A total of 14,858 granted patent data of the FCV industry containing 798 patents of the target firm were extracted from the Derwent Innovation Index database as the input data of the empirical study. The result shows that the framework can provide a more profound analysis for identifying technology opportunities, which offer more appropriate insights in both strategic and operational level technological decisions for technology-oriented firms.

Vigorously developing new materials technology is of great significance to improving the high-tech level of the textile industry, enhancing the transformation and upgrading of the textile industry, promoting the sustainable development of the industry and enhancing the comprehensive national strength. In this paper, the data of 6982 invention patents created by global textile new material technology cooperation are chosen as the research object, and the patent technology network analysis method is used to examine the dual network relationship and its evolution features. The results suggest that the core subjects represented by multinational corporations, well-known universities and scientific research institutes integrate resources to conduct technology cooperation research, and the cooperation network’s innovation activities in this field tend to be stable, but there is no relatively stable collaborative relationship between innovation organizations. Furthermore, technology nodes, technology subgroups, spillover effects between technologies, diffusion and fusion, and technology correlation strength have greatly improved. At the same time, reasonable division of labor and coordination of the collaborative activities among nodes in the core, middle, and edge layers of the network are crucial, and the division of labor and cooperation within the network are of great significance for improving collaborative innovation efficiency. This study is useful to determine the innovation subjects, network structure and technological evolution of global textile new material technology cooperation research and development, but there is no analysis of the relationship between organizational cooperation network and technological network and its evolution characteristics in this field. As a result, this article tries to supplement existing research in terms of both research object and research content, to fill the gaps in the existing research.

Objective. The Patent Value Index is created to identify the most valuable patents based on the evidence yielded by different agents in the patenting chain. Design/Methodology/Approach. The agents and indicators are the following: (a) patent holder (number of countries where the invention is protected); (b) Brazilian IP Office (INPI, the patent-granting agent), and (c) users (number of citations). Brazilian green patents were selected for the application of the index. Data was collected on the Global Patent Index. 478 patents were found, the values of which were calculated by the index. Using the overall score median, the population was divided into two groups: (1) upper-half median (composed of the highest-scoring patents) and (2) lower-half median (lowest-scoring patents). Results/Discussion. The results identified converging behavior among the values demonstrated by the three agents, as the patents in the first 183 positions evidence that 65.5% are from foreign countries, 77.6% belong to companies, 96.2% have a patent family, 86.9% have a Patent Cooperation Treaty request, 78.7% were granted, and 74.9% are cited by other patents. Regarding the 295 patents of the lower median, 94.6% are Brazilian, 44.7% belong to individuals, 22.2% were granted, 4% are cited, and 9.6% have a patent family. Conclusions. The constructed index can be used for those patentometric studies aimed at investigating qualitative aspects of inventions. Originality/Value. A value triad, -with data available in databases-, is created to evaluate patents according to different agents in the inventive chain.

Research objectiveTriadic patent (TP) families and Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications are often used as datasets to measure innovation capability or R&D internationalization, but their concordance is unclear, which is the main issue in this study.MethodsWe collect the global TP and PCT data from the Derwent Innovations Index (DII), and a total of 1,589,172 TP families and 4,067,389 PCT applications are retrieved. Based on International Patent Classification (IPC) codes, we compare these two big datasets in three parts: IPC distribution, IPC co-occurrence network, and nation-IPC co-occurrence network. In order to understand the overall similarities and differences between TP and PCT, we make the basic statistics of the global data and w-core defined based on the w-index. Furthermore, the w-cores are visualized and the global similarities are calculated for the detailed concordance and differences.FindingsThe result shows that the w-core is suitable to select the core part of big data and TP and PCT get high concordance. Meanwhile, in technological convergence, some specific technical fields (e.g. chemistry, medicine, electronic communication, and lighting technology) and countries/regions (e.g. Germany, Japan, China, and Korea), there are a few differences.Practical implicationsTP families are very similar to PCT applications in terms of reflecting innovation capability or R&D internationalization at a macro level, but when it comes to technological convergence, specific research topics, and countries/regions, the choice may depend on the purpose of the research.