Patent Collaboration Research Articles

Industry–academia collaboration in fuel cells: a perspective from paper and patent analysis

This study explores current collaboration trend between industry and academic institutions in fuel cells by examining collaborative papers and patents during the period 1991---2010. Papers and patents from industry---academia collaboration (IAC) are identified; the quantity, ratio, and their origins are analyzed; and the differences in performance of these collaborative documents between academic institutions and industrial institutions are contrasted. This study finds that quantities of industry---academia collaborative papers and patents increased annually in both academic institutions and industrial institutions. Countries with high production of papers and patents tend to produce more industry---academia collaborative papers and patents. Industrial institutions with high patent output and academic institutions with high paper output are active participants in IAC paper collaborations. Only a few pairs of industry---academic alliances have taken active part in IAC patent collaborations. Industry relies highly on collaboration with academia in paper publishing, but not in patenting, while academic institutions rarely rely on industry collaboration for paper or patent productivity.

Small worldliness, Chinese culture, and firm innovation performance: an empirical study based on patent collaboration data of China

China is an Asian country that has a more collectivist culture compared with that of western countries. Furthermore, China is also different from other Asian countries and regions, for example, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, in terms of the social and political context. The small-world network thereby plays quite a different role in innovation in China. This paper expands on the existing studies by examining the impact of the small-world network on firm innovation performance using both quantity and quality measurements. With the intra-firm level patent collaboration data from China, we find that a more clustered patent collaboration network has a negative impact on firm innovation performance. Patent collaboration networks with greater small worldliness would harm firm innovation performance in China, which is quite different from the role played by small worldliness in western and other Asian countries. The path length has a negative impact, and the size of the connected component has a positive impact on firm innovation, which is similar to the role of small-world networks in western and other Asian countries. Our finding is suggestive to the firm managers who face the collectivist culture of China, which has greater emphasis on hierarchy and bureaucracy.

The evolution of South Korea’s innovation system: moving towards the triple helix model?

The South Korea's innovation system has been transformed in tandem with rapid economic growth over the last three decades. In order to explore the evolution process of the innovation system in Korea, this study examines the trends and patterns in collaboration activities among the triple helix actors, such as university, industry, and government (UIG), using co-patent data. The triple helix framework is employed to analyze innovation dynamics within the networks of the bi- and trilateral relations embedded in patent collaborations. The analyses focus on how the triple helix dynamics have been shaped and transformed in the course of development of the innovation system. The results reveal that collaboration activities among UIG largely increased across three developmental phases from 1980 to 2012. In the early periods, strategic R&D alliances between industry and government sector were set up to strengthen enterprises' innovation capabilities. When the Korean large conglomerates, Chaebols, became a dominant driver of domestic innovation activities, the primary agents of the collaborations shifted from industry-government to industry-university. The network analysis shows that university-industry collaboration is the strongest within the triple helix in recent years, followed by industry-government relations and then UIG relations. The tripartite collaboration has emerged with the rise of entrepreneur universities, but its network has rather been weak and inactive. While Korea has experienced a transition from statist model to a triple helix, the full-fledged triple helix model has not been established yet.

Regional University-Industry Knowledge Flow: A Study of Chinese Academic Patent Licensing Data

Knowledge and technology transferring between universities and industries had been an important research focus of innovation management. Bibliometric research on the university-industry knowledge transferring had always used patent collaboration and citation data as indicators. However, patent licensing data were more representative and could target the knowledge transferring directions. This paper had gone through the data of Chinese academic-industry patent licensing and focused on the variances in regional level and geographic distance. Using patent licensing document analyzing method, the academic-industry knowledge flowing patterns had been discovered. Results showed that localization effects had been existed in those Chinese regions and the engagement of knowledge transferring was severely unbalanced.

Nanotechnology Innovation System: An Empirical Analysis of the Emerging Actors and Collaborative Networks

This research presents an empirical analysis of the emerging actors and collaborative networks in nanotechnology. Patenting activities and technology diffusion in high-tech sectors are being increasingly driven by collaborative, international, and technology-based new entrants. To support the technology transfer process within or across country, this study examines how patent collaborations occur and how the actors interact with each other. The research develops a taxonomy that could make a significant impact on accurate nanotechnology patent data quests and increases the reliability of the analyses. The findings show that significant linkages of the U.S., Korean, and Japanese actors appear as being highly centralized around key players within their own national innovation systems. The results suggest that strengthening the linkages between scientific and corporate actors may eliminate many barriers and accelerate the diffusion of technology into the commercialized stage. This process will be faster if academic researchers focus on the requirements of industry, and the new inventions are linked with the needs of large organizations.

Collaborative networks and technology clusters — The case of nanowire

Patenting activities and technology diffusion in high-tech sectors are being increasingly driven by collaborative, international and technology-based new entrants. In the realm of nanotechnology, one of the most mature structures is nanowire. This paper is concerned with the technology transfer process in the nanowire field; in particular it examines how patent collaborations occur and how the key actors interact with each other to support this process. This study uses a different methodology than previous studies in terms of patent data extraction. The methodology offers a new taxonomy that could make a significant impact on accurate patent data quests and increase the reliability of patent analyses in emerging fields such as nanotechnology. As patent data are valuable sources of technology innovation data and for forecasting technical change, this study utilises patent network analysis to visualise the actors, clusters and their relationships at the organisational, national and international levels. Overall, this study proposes a new collaborative network model to assist with analysing patenting activities between actors in regard to types of linkages. Different types of linkages between countries and organisations can be found for nanowire-related patenting activities by following the proposed network model. Findings indicate that some nations have highly centralised networks where large organisations dominate most linkages, as in the case of South Korea with regard to Samsung. Nations such as the US and Japan have a more distributed network where academic and industrial players are linked with each other. In the case of China, there were mono-linkages between large organisations such as Foxconn and Tsinghua University, which was the key with regard to collaborative innovation there.

Identifying the Evolution of Patent Assignees Collaboration Networks: A Case of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)

This paper is a fundamental work of a purpose to identify the correlation between patent assignees collaboration networks and technology innovation activities, which includes R&D collaboration and management, technology transfer and transform, etc. The principal task of this paper is to confirm a series of methods used for identifying the evolution pattern of the patent assignees collaboration networks and make a demonstration of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), P.R. China. The analysis was carried out at two levels: ego network, in which CAS was taken as one node, and global network, in which all the subinstitutes of CAS were taken as nodes. Analysis focused on applications numbers, growth of collaborators, densification and growth, network diameter and distribution patterns of final collaboration networks. The results shows that CAS patent applications grew rapidly and showed an exponential growth feature, the collaboration networks tended to densify, the diameters of global networks increased constantly with no signal of being stable, increase or decrease in future. The final global network from 1985-2009 had been mapped and the nodes had degrees k followed a power law distribution. the CAS patent assignees collaborations networks had the growth and preferential attachment features, was consistent to the hypothesis that there might be some factors deciding the evolution patterns of the patent assignees collaboration networks. It is a fundamental work to identify the correlation between patent assignees collaboration networks and technology innovation activities.

The Globalization of Technology in Emerging Markets: A Gravity Model on the Determinants of International Patent Collaborations

International technological collaborations (ITCs) and face-to-face interactions are an important vehicle of knowledge diffusion. This paper analyzes ITCs among USPTO patents’ inventors in eleven emerging economies and seven advanced countries (1990–2004) and a novel database on companies’ country of origin. Technological proximity and sharing a common language are key drivers of ITCs. When the applicant’s ownership is in the emerging country ITCs depend positively upon transport and communication costs (geographical distance and longitude) and negatively upon the strength of intellectual property rights (IPRs). Stronger IPRs positively affect ITCs from subsidiaries of multinational firms.

Technological collaboration patterns in solar cell industry based on patent inventors and assignees analysis

This study examines technological collaboration in the solar cell industry using the information of patent assignees and inventors as defined by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Three different collaborative types, namely local (same city), domestic (different cities of the same country), and international collaboration, are discussed. The general status of solar cell patent collaborations, transforming trends of collaborative patterns, average numbers of assignees and inventors for three collaborative types, and international collaboration countries are studied. It is found that co-invented patents and co-assigned patents have both increased in numbers during the four decades studied, and that collaboration between technology owners is very low while the collaboration between inventors is active. Domestic collaboration is the main collaborative pattern for both assignee collaboration and inventor collaboration. The other two collaborative types show contrary trends: international collaboration has slowly risen in the past decades while local collaboration has dwindled. The US has the largest number of internationally collaborative patents worldwide, though such patents account for a low portion of total US patents. In contrast, China has a small total number of patents and internationally collaborative patents, however its international collaborative shares are higher. The international collaboration patents among countries are few. A co-assigned patent analysis indicates that the main international cooperation partner of the United States is Japan. Based on an international co-invented patent analysis, the main international collaboration partners of the United States are Britain, Japan, and Germany; and the United States is also the most important collaboration partner of China.

The impact of university–industry collaboration networks on innovation in nanobiopharmaceuticals

This paper investigates the effects of multiplicative interaction between clustering and reach on members' knowledge creation and patent value based on complex network analysis in nanobiopharmaceuticals field. In order to avoid the high skew of patent value among patents, we use the weighted patent value as a proxy index of the invention's innovation performance rather than simple patent counts. The university–industry collaboration networks in the emerging and rapidly evolving interdisciplinary field are examined at firm-level. We further detect the impact of small world properties as well as the size of largest component on patent value and find that small-world structure has parabolical effect on patent value at firm-level. We add new evidence to the literature on this topic with an empirical investigation for the university–industry patent collaboration in the nanobiopharmaceutical field. The findings broaden and enrich the existing literature and can contribute to policy makers and relevant managers when making decisions for university and firm locality as well as the choices of the collaborators.

Patent collaboration and international knowledge flow

In this paper, we provide an empirical analysis of evolving knowledge networks of successful patent collaboration at national level in 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. All countries are classified into main knowledge creators (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) group) and main knowledge users (non-OECD group) in order to distinguish specific characteristics of knowledge interactions within groups and between groups. The analyses are carried out from four aspects, i.e., the overall distribution of knowledge interactions among countries, the countries’ ability to inhabit and facilitate the knowledge flows among others with the help of flow betweenness measures, the countries’ bridgeness between two groups with the recently developed Q-measures, and the most important bilateral knowledge interactions. Results show that although most of the international knowledge interactions still take place within the OECD group, the non-OECD countries have improved their performance significantly. They participate much more in international patenting and collaborations and play much more important roles in facilitating knowledge interactions among others. Among them, China and Taiwan are two most dazzling new stars according to their performance in international knowledge interactions. Considering together with their rapidly improved world competitiveness, the findings indicate that the wide and deep participation in international knowledge interactions may have great contribution to the economic competitiveness.

The impact of small world on innovation: An empirical study of 16 countries

This paper investigates the impact of small world properties and the size of largest component on innovation performance at national level. Our study adds new evidence to the limited literature on this topic with an empirical investigation for the patent collaboration networks of 16 main innovative countries during 1975–2006. We combine small world network theory with statistical models to systematically explore the relationship between network structure and patent productivity. Results fail to support that the size of largest component enhances innovative productivity significantly, which is not consistent with recent concerns regarding positive effects of largest component on patent output. We do find that small-world structure benefits innovation but it is limited to a special range after which the effects inversed and shorter path length always correlates with increased innovation output. Our findings extend the current literature and they can be implicated for policy makers and relevant managers when making decisions for technology, industry and firm location.

Small Worlds and Regional Innovation

Small-world networks have attracted much theoretical attention and are widely thought to enhance creativity. Yet empirical studies of their evolution and evidence of their benefits remain scarce. We develop and exploit a novel database on patent coauthorship to investigate the effects of collaboration networks on innovation. Our analysis reveals the existence of regional small-world structures and the emergence and disappearance of giant components in patent collaboration networks. Using statistical models, we test and fail to find evidence that small-world structure (cohesive clusters connected by occasional nonlocal ties) enhances innovative productivity within geographic regions. We do find that both shorter path lengths and larger connected components correlate with increased innovation. We discuss the implications of our findings for future social network research and theory as well as regional innovation policies.

Small Worlds and Regional Innovation

Small world networks have attracted much theoretical attention and are widely thought to enhance creativity. Yet empirical studies of their evolution and evidence of their benefits remain scarce. Using patent co-authorship data, we explore regional small-world structures and investigate the emergence and disappearance of giant components in patent collaboration networks. We test the idea that small world structure (cohesive clusters connected by occasional non-local ties) and shorter path lengths improve innovative productivity within geographic regions. We find at best qualified evidence to support the popular consensus that small worlds enhance innovation. We then discuss the implications of our findings for small world research and regional innovation policies.