Dynamics of Topics in Antimalarial Patents: Comparison Between the USPTO and SIPO

Abstract

For the past several decades, considerable efforts have been made to roll back malaria, but contributions in this field have not been clearly investigated thus far. In this context, this paper explores research topics of malaria patents and compares their time-series trends. In particular, we compare the dynamics of antimalarial patent topics between the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the People’s Republic of China using a dynamic topic modeling (DTM) approach. Thus far, more patents have been applied in the USPTO with a drastic increase in the number of malarial patents. Eventually, patent application in the SIPO has become more frequent in comparison to that of the USPTO after 2013. In addition to the two different patenting trends between the USPTO and SIPO, topics of technological fields identified by the DTM approach are rather different for the two patent offices. Topics of mosquito prevention methods, such as a net and diagnostic tool, were found only in the SIPO, while in the USPTO, topics for specific vaccines in different stages were identified. In both, the SIPO and USPTO, topics of malarial medicine were common, and interestingly, two topics related to malarial medicines made using natural resources were observed in the SIPO. As such, our findings confirm that despite the common goals to eliminate malaria, different technological fields have evolved in the two major patent offices, based on the interests of the applicants and environmental conditions. Such distinctions shed light on necessity and effect complementary cooperation between the developed and developing worlds.