United States Patent And Trademark Office Research Articles

A structured MPA approach to explore technological core competence, knowledge flow, and technology development through social network patentometrics

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 Using the global main path, companies monitor outdated technologies that can be replaced by new technologies and aid to plan R&D strategy and implement appropriate strategic decisions avoiding path dependency.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.

Timing and payoff of patent purchases: the role of firm size and composition

ABSTRACT While large pharmaceutical companies continue to dominate drug development and patent acquisition, their timing of drug patent acquisition and subsequent payoffs remain poorly understood. We analysed the effects of firm characteristics on the timing of patent purchases, with a unique data set constructed using publicly available data provided by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). We focused on the role of firm size and composition in affecting the timing of patent purchases and the subsequent payoff; particularly, how firms’ R&D intensity and overall scale affect purchasing decisions and commercial success of the drugs. The quantitative results show that, on average, firms with larger scale and stronger R&D departments are more likely to purchase drug patents later; furthermore, a strong R&D department contributes positively to drug sales and market shares through a better selection process of patents. The economics intuition is that firms with a larger scale and greater emphasis on R&D investment have advantages in producing in-house innovation, so they tend to be more selective when buying from outsources. This results in buying patents later and better subsequent commercial performance on the drugs that firms purchased.

Nanotechnology and Protection of Intellectual Property: Emerging Trends.

Technology experts foresee that nanotechnology is the next industrial revolution and it has great potential to bring solutions to many challenges of global relevance in terms of a diverse range of applications. Efficiency-driven economies are transforming into innovation-driven economies where Intellectual Property (IP) plays a pivotal role in achieving a competitive advantage. Whereas industry analysts assert that IP roadblocks will be a severe detriment to the development of nanotechnology due to infringements and high-profile patent battles. Various authors have made a significant effort to analyse the implications of IP on nanotechnology but most of the published literature covers only the years 2000- 2010. Data and insights pertaining to recent developments are lagging behind. Therefore, the objective of this review was to explore cutting-edge empirical evidence towards emerging trends of Intellectual Property protection in nanotechnology, thereby to provide insights aimed at unleashing the full potential of nanotechnology innovation for socio-economic advantage. Patent information over the period 2000 to 2018 was collated and analysed to determine the latest trends. To gain a global perspective, nanotechnology patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and nanotechnology patents published in the 'PatentScope' of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) were surveyed along with literature in relation to nanotechnology commercialization and litigation. Our study revealed that worldwide protection of Intellectual Property in nanotechnology has steadily been increasing year-on-year accounting 3.3 million patent applications filed in 2018 in which China and U.S. are dominating. The other main contributors are Japan, Germany Republic of Korea, France and U.K. Asia has emerged as the single region to file more than half of total filings for the first time thus shifting global IP landscape from Europe to Asia. Another notable finding is that there is a significant growth in trademark registration in many of the leading economies. Top five technology fields with high international patenting activity are computer technology, medical technology, digital communication, electrical machinery and pharmaceuticals where computer technology is dominating. More than 90% of the total patents are granted on materials, devices and processes developed as basic building blocks of nanotechnology at laboratory level which sound as more downstream innovations in the short-term. Amid the upward trends in nanotechnology patenting, newly emerging obstacles pose risks to innovation. A key finding of the present study is that the increasing trend of patent litigation almost follows the same path of patent grants indicating a positive correlation. A global prominence of middle-income and low-income countries in patent filing is yet to emerge which foreshadows an IP divide. A secondary market for patent assets is pronounced with many new types of players leading to a high cost of patenting nanotechnology. These trends foreshadow a surge of patent filings in the years to come and.the patent offices will be confronted with that 'surge' of patent applications of increased complexity and multidisciplinary nature..Patent offices with inadequate efficacy will ultimately produce lowquality patents along with a difficulty to enter into markets and will facilitate exploiting of the IP legal systems to extract rewards for infringement without contributing to innovation or social prosperity of nations. Insights and recommendations given in this paper will enable nanotechnology researchers, inventors, technopreneurs and investors to understand recent trends and global perspectives on implications of IP in nanotechnology and intensifying IP battle thereby to contemplate and succeed in their roadmaps towards leveraging on nanotechnology.

Technological and scientific prospecting of sugar cane bagasse flour (saccharum officinarum l.)

Sugar cane bagasse flour (Saccharum officinarum L.) is a promising product and has great market potential with application in human food. With the help of technological and scientific prospecting, it is possible to guide and cover the view on research about the use of this material in the area of food science. With that, the objective was to investigate the existence of the development of sugarcane bagasse flour in technological and scientific databases. The patent bases analyzed were the National Institute of Industrial Property (NIIP), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Espacenet Patent Search database. The scientific platforms analyzed were Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), Web of Science, Pubmed and Portal Periódicos Capes (Brazil). Brazil has made progress in intellectual production on patent bases, however, no technological and / or scientific record has been identified regarding the use of flour for human consumption in the analyzed period. From this, it is necessary, then, to carry out research on the food potential of this flour, mainly in Brazil, since the country is considered the largest producer of sugarcane, having a vast material to be explored, developing functionality in the development of new products and increasing intellectual property in the area.

Stylized Facts of U.S. Patenting – Issue Rates, Entry Pendency, Characteristics of Office Actions, Examiner Citations and Child Continuations across Technology Centres and Geographies

We examined ten years (1st January 2008 until 31st December 2017) of the regular non-provisional utility applications data (~3.63 million applications) from three different United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) sources - Patent Examination Data System (PEDS), Patents-view database and Office Action Research data set, to present stylized facts of the US patenting process. We analysed cross sectional and temporal variation in the patent issue rates, entry pend-ency, office actions (percentage disposal and entry pend-ency conditional on the nth office action instant, type of rejections, proportion of citations in different types of rejections), child continuation behavior and citations by applicants and examiners in the granted applications. This analysis was performed across progenitor and continuation applications, both at first action disposals or post office actions and across eight technology centers and seven geographic locations (North America, Western Europe, Japan, Korea (South), Taiwan, China and India). The patent issue rate differed substantially between technology centers and geographic locations based on the type of patent application and its nature of disposal i.e. at the first action or post office actions. The patent issue rate were higher and the entry pend-ency lower for the continuation applications, than that for the progenitor applications. Continuation applications were more likely ~ 28% against ~ 19% of the progenitor applications to exhibit child continuity – a possible strategic use of continuations. Examiners provided more US citations than foreign citations; thus, an exhaustive US prior art study could be of value to the applicants. Emerging markets showed an increasing trend in the number of patent applications filed with USPTO - from 2008 to 2017, China and India showed a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of ~ 15% and ~ 10% in the number of patent applications filed, respectively.

Screening patents of ICT in construction using deep learning and NLP techniques

PurposeThis study proposes an approach to solve the fundamental problem in using query-based methods (i.e. searching engines and patent retrieval tools) to screen patents of information and communication technology in construction (ICTC). The fundamental problem is that ICTC incorporates various techniques and thus cannot be simply represented by man-made queries. To investigate this concern, this study develops a binary classifier by utilizing deep learning and NLP techniques to automatically identify whether a patent is relevant to ICTC, thus accurately screening a corpus of ICTC patents.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs NLP techniques to convert the textual data of patents into numerical vectors. Then, a supervised deep learning model is developed to learn the relations between the input vectors and outputs.FindingsThe validation results indicate that (1) the proposed approach has a better performance in screening ICTC patents than traditional machine learning methods; (2) besides the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that provides structured and well-written patents, the approach could also accurately screen patents form Derwent Innovations Index (DIX), in which patents are written in different genres.Practical implicationsThis study contributes a specific collection for ICTC patents, which is not provided by the patent offices.Social implicationsThe proposed approach contributes an alternative manner in gathering a corpus of patents for domains like ICTC that neither exists as a searchable classification in patent offices, nor is accurately represented by man-made queries.Originality/valueA deep learning model with two layers of neurons is developed to learn the non-linear relations between the input features and outputs providing better performance than traditional machine learning models. This study uses advanced NLP techniques lemmatization and part-of-speech POS to process textual data of ICTC patents. This study contributes specific collection for ICTC patents which is not provided by the patent offices.

Key Takeaways from "The Intersection of University Inventions and Recent Cases at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)"

This article provides a brief summary of the discussion, presentation, and knowledge shared during the Eight Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Inventors held in Houston, Texas, in April 2019. The panel, "The Intersection of University Inventions and Recent Cases at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)," focused on university inventions and the PTAB, with perspectives from a university technology transfer office, a PTAB administrative patent judge, and attorneys practicing before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and in Federal District Court. The panel was led by Andrew Maas of Louisiana State University and included Kalyan Deshpande of the USPTO; Kyle Friesen of Shook, Hardy & Bacon; and Jay Yates of Patterson + Sheridan. The panel busted myths and provided helpful information and perspective on the PTAB.

Patents and knowledge diffusion: The effect of early disclosure

We study how the timing of information disclosure affects the diffusion of codified technical information. On November 29, 2000, the American Inventors Protection Act (AIPA) reduced the default publication time of patents at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to 18 months. We analyze the effects of this change by means of a regression discontinuity design with time as an assignment variable and a complementary difference-in-differences analysis. Our study shows that information flows from patents measured by forward citations, increased. Interestingly, the degree of localization within geographic boundaries remained unchanged and technological localization even increased moderately. Moreover, the effect of early disclosure on citations from patents filed by patent attorney service firms is particularly strong. These results imply that knowledge diffusion stemming from speedier disclosure of technical information is confined to the existing attention scope and absorptive capacity of inventors and organizations.

The Effect of Firing Costs on Worker Productivity and Turnover: Theory and Evidence

This paper explores, both theoretically and empirically, how firing costs affect worker productivity and turnover. We develop a model in which workers are essential to knowledge transfer between firms and worker effort is firm-specific in the sense that a worker can be fired before reaping the full return from effort (i.e., before acquiring all of the potential knowledge valuable to competing firms). Our model shows that the hold-up risk faced by workers induces them to curtail their innovative effort. However, an increase in firing costs inhibits the firm's ability to hold up the worker and thereby leads the worker to exert higher effort. The increased productivity, in turn, affects turnover, and the magnitude of this effect depends primarily on the degree to which the worker's knowledge stock is transferable to competing firms. In our empirical analysis, we consider the passage of the wrongful discharge laws in the US as an exogenous increase in firing costs. Using individual-level data constructed from patents issued to inventors by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), we find supporting evidence for the model's implications.

Patents and Innovation Among Neurosurgeons from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

ObjectiveNeurosurgeons have taken on the role of innovators, continuing to move the field forward over the centuries. More recently, innovation has taken the form of new technological devices and therapeutics, which require patenting. The aim of this study is to identify major areas of innovation in the field of neurosurgery by evaluating patent records.MethodsThis study quantifies the number of patents the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) neurosurgeons hold across different subspecialties. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent database was queried using the names of 7,293 AANS members who filed patents between 1976 and 2019.ResultsA total of 346 (4.7%) AANS neurosurgeons hold a total of 1,025 patents. The number of patents held by each neurosurgeon ranged from one to 109. The areas that patents were filed under include cellular and genetic science (40), drug delivery (45), image guidance (82), neuromodulation (52), pain (7), peripheral nerve stimulation (24), spine (398), surgical devices (148), trauma (16), tumor (78), vascular (67), and other (68). No patents were filed under pediatrics (0). The fields with the greatest number of filed patents are spine, instruments/devices, and image guidance.ConclusionGiven the technical nature of the field of neurosurgery, instruments and devices that improve localization, visualization, targeting, and spinal reconstruction are often in demand. Furthermore, since the rates of spinal procedures and implants continue to increase, higher patenting may be motivated by the opportunity to develop new products that can result in royalty payments to neurosurgeons. The advent of new technologies undoubtedly continues to push the field of neurosurgery forward.

Patent citation inflation: The phenomenon, its measurement, and relative indicators to temper its effects

In recent decades, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been granting more and more patents with more and more references, which has led to patent citation inflation. Citation counts are a fundamental consideration in decisions about research funding, academic promotions, commercializing IP, investing in technologies, etc. With so much at stake, we must be sure we are valuing citations at their true worth. In this article, we reveal two types of patent citation inflation and analyze its causes and cumulative effects. Further, we propose some alternative indicators that more accurately reflect the true worth of a citation. A case study on the patents held by eight universities demonstrates that the relative indicators outlined in this paper are an effective way to account for citation inflation as an alternative approach to evaluating patent activity.

PHOTOCATALYTIC ACTIVITY OF MOLYBDATES: A TECHNOLOGICAL PROSPECTING

Among the several applications of molybdates, the photocatalysis is a highly appealing process with multiple applications, mainly in the fields of pollution removal. In view of this, the main objective of this work was to study the potentialities and the evolution of the technological features inherent to patent deposits, and panorama of publications of articles on molybdates, as well as the related photocatalytic a properties, specifically in the range years from 2000 to 2017. The study was performed using information from the Web of Science, SciELO, European Patent Office (EPO), United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Derwent Innovations Index, and the database of the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) of Brazil. The research has shown growth in the number of patents and articles over the years. Brazil is well positioned in the world ranking of publications of articles containing photocatalytic properties of molybdates, but does not display patents filed with INPI. Regarding the world stage, the results indicate a promising area with significant growth in the number of patents and scientific articles.

Reinforcement Learning Patents: A Transatlantic Review

One of the most difficult problems with developing scalable artificial intelligence (AI) is tracking technical innovation. As such, this research will provide empirical data relating to patents with legal claims to state of the art in AI technologies, reinforcement learning. A keystone architecture in the machine learning paradigm, reinforcement learning technologies power trading algorithms, driverless cars, and space satellites. In competitive global markets, owning and protecting legal rights to reinforcement learning technologies may mean the difference between market dominance and irrelevance for the transatlantic firm. Aggregating patent data for reinforcement learning technologies from both the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the European Patent Office (EPO), this research offers a transatlantic perspective on reinforcement learning innovation and intellectual property protections.

Generating Links for Patent Documents: an Automatic Approach using Computational Intelligence

Patents are organized into classification systems, which assist offices and users in the process of seeking and retrieving such documents. A wide variety of users use the patent systems and the information contained in these documents. However, patents are complex legal documents with a significant number of technical and descriptive details, which makes it difficult to identify and analyze the information contained in these documents. An automatic link system associated with some of the terms found in the patents would provide quick access to the concepts contained in specific knowledge bases. This work presents results of a project in which the objective is the automatic generation of links in patent documents. The experiments were conducted with four subgroups of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which uses the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system. As the patent documents did not have keywords, the meaningful terms were selected using the algorithm χ2, for which the contents of the entire patent document were used. Some keywords with more than one meaning were disambiguated using a specific algorithm, generating a file with useful information used in the experiments. The links were generated based on Wikipedia articles and the USPTO patent database. The use of the patent database as a possible destination for the link is intended to cover cases in which Wikipedia has no articles on certain terms and also to provide an alternative source that may assist readers in understanding those documents. It is expected, with the creation of automated links, to make it easier to access concepts related to the terms presented by the documents and to understand the information disclosed by the inventors.

The overlooked citations: Investigating the impact of ignoring citations to published patent applications

Abstract A utility patent application may result in two citable documents: a published patent application (PPA) and a patent if the application is granted. Most analytic works consider only citations to the patent and ignore those to the PPA. This study gathers more than 270,000 U.S. utility patents granted in 2014 and their PPAs, and compares their citation counts up to 2018. Statistics show that citations to patents, on the average, account for less than 50 % of those to the patents and their PPAs combined together, indicating a significant underestimation to the value or impact of the patents. The degree of depreciation is worse when the time gaps between patents and their PPAs are longer, as the PPAs not only have accumulated citations for a longer period, but also individually, concurrently, and continuously receive citations after the patent is granted. This study further applies Main Path Analysis to a conventional citation network involving only citations to the patents and another network augmented with those to the PPAs, using empirical data from United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Cancer Moonshot Patent Data. The main path derived from the augmented network is almost entirely different from that of the conventional network.

The Hidden Value of Abandoned Applications to the Patent System

Some inventors abandon their patent applications without ever receiving a patent. Although patent scholars view such abandoned patent applications as essentially worthless, we question that conventional wisdom. Conducting an empirical analysis of a recently released patent application dataset in light of a 1999 change that requires publication of most abandoned applications, we find that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) often uses abandoned applications as “prior art” when examining future patent applications. Abandoned applications thus generate an “administrative disclosure” that prevents the issuance of broader patent rights to later applicants. By narrowing the scope of new patents, abandoned applications perform a public service in opening up more invention space to the public domain but do so at an enormous private cost to the abandonee — benefits and costs that have yet to be fully accounted for in the literature.

식물신품종보호제도 이후 나라꽃 무궁화의 국내외 연구동향 및 확대 이용 방안†

This study was carried out to investigate the domestic and international development of a new cultivar of the Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus L.), the Korean national flower, and the protection of the new plant variety. In addition, it will be used as basic data for the expansion of domestic distribution, promoting oversea export, and expanding the range of landscape architectural use. A total of 97 varieties received plant variety protection rights from the Korea Seed & Variety Service from 2004 to 2018. The selection criteria were plants having unique flowers, growth habits, and variegated leaves. Some cultivars with unique features, such as flower size, shape, and red eyes were available for focus planting. Plant varieties with tall and strong growth patterns have been highly valuable for street and focus planting. Cultivars with dwarf stems and compact branches are utilized for pot planting and bonsai. The protected cultivars were mostly single flower varieties, with two semi-double flowers. There were 57 cultivars of pink flowers with red eyes and 21 cultivars of white flowers with red eyes. There were 61 cultivars developed by crossing, 23 cultivars through interspecific hybridization and 7 cultivars developed through radiation treatment and mutation. The Hibiscus cultivars registered to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) consisted of seven cultivars each from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, four from South Korea, and three from Belgium. The Hibiscus cultivars registered to the European Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) consisted of 16 cultivars from France, 9 from the Netherlands, 5 from the UK and 1 from Belgium. The cultivars that received both plant patent and plant breeder rights in the United States and Canada were ‘America Irene Scott’, ‘Antong Two’, ‘CARPA’, ‘DVPazurri’, ‘Gandini Santiago’, ‘Gandini van Aart’, ‘ILVO347’, ‘ILVOPS’, ‘JWNWOOD 4’, ‘Notwood3’, ‘RWOODS5’, ‘SHIMCR1’, ‘SHIMRR38’, ‘SHIMRV24’, and ‘THEISSHSSTL’. ‘SHIMCR1’ and ‘SHIMRV24’ acquired both domestic plant protection rights and overseas plant patents. The 14 cultivars that received both US plant patents and European protection rights were ‘America Irene Scott’, ‘Bricutts’, ‘DVPAZURRI’, ‘Gandini Santiago’, ‘Gandini van Aart’, ‘JWNWOOD4’, ‘MINDOUB1’, ‘MINDOUR1’, ‘MINDOUV5’, ‘NOTWOOD3’, ‘RWOODS5’, ‘RWOODS6’, ‘Summer Holiday’, and ‘Summer Night’. The cultivars that obtained US patents consisted of 18 cultivars (52.9%) with double flowers, 4 cultivars (11.8%) with semi-double flowers, and 12 cultivars (35.3%) with single flowers. The cultivars that obtained European new variety protection rights, consisted of 11 cultivars (34.3%) with double flowers, 12 cultivars (21.9%) with semi-double flowers, and 14 cultivars (43.8%) with single flowers. In the future, new cultivars of H. syriacus need to be developed in order to expand domestic distribution and export abroad. In addition, when developing new cultivars, it is required to develop cultivars with shorter branches for use in flower beds, borders, hedges, and pot planting.

Trend Analysis of Technology Innovation in the Developed Region of China

This paper uses the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as a data source, combined with the Global Innovation Index (GII), systematically analyzes the technological innovations of the top 20 countries in the world in recent years, comparing the gaps in technological innovation between China and other developed countries. In 2008-2017, we retrieved 66,004 patents granted by Chinese inventors in the United States in the past 10 years, and analyzed the technological innovation level of first-tier cities in China from the perspectives of time distribution, regional distribution, distribution of assignees, and technical fields. The result shows that China's technology innovation output is growing at a high speed, and the proportion of patents in first-tier cities is 61.99%, the average annual growth rate was 25.33%. The innovation output is concentrated in the fields of digital communication and biomedicine.

Nucleic Acid Therapeutics in Huntington's Disease.

Protein misfolding is a critical factor in the progression of a large number of neurodegenerative diseases. The incorrectly folded protein is prone to aggregation, leading to aberrant interaction with other cellular proteins, elevated oxidative stress, impaired cellular machinery, finally resulting in cell death. Due to its monogenic origin, Huntington's disease (HD) is a poster child of protein misfolding neurodegenerative disorders. The presence of neuronal inclusions of mutant huntingtin N-terminal fragments, mainly in the cortex and striatum, is a neuropathological hallmark of HD. Inhibition of protein misfolding and aggregation has been attempted using a variety of conventional protein stabilizers. This review describes how, in recent times, nucleic acid therapeutics has emerged as a selective tool to downregulate the aberrant transcript and reduce expression of mutant huntingtin, thereby alleviating protein aggregation. Different strategies of use of nucleic acids, including antisense oligonucleotides, short inhibitory RNA sequences and aptamers have been discussed. The following patent databases were consulted: European Patent Office (EPO), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Patent scope Search International and National Patent Collections (WIPO) and Google Patents. Tools such as RNA interference (RNAi) and antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) are potential therapeutic agents which target the post-transcriptional step, accelerating mRNA degradation and inhibiting the production of the mutant protein. These nucleic acid sequences not only target the elongated CAG triplet repeat translating to an expanded polyglutamine tract in the mutant protein, but have also been used to target single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the mutant allele. The therapeutic sequences have been investigated in a number of cells and animal models of HD. One antisense sequence, with desirable safety properties, has recently shown downregulation of huntingtin protein in a limited clinical trial. RNA aptamers have also shown promising results in inhibiting protein aggregation in a yeast model of HD. Novel drug delivery techniques have been employed to overcome the blood brain barrier for the use of these therapeutic sequences. The selectivity and specificity imparted by nucleic acids, along with novel delivery techniques, make them hopeful candidates for the development of a curative strategy for HD.

Comparing nanotechnology landscapes in the US and China: a patent analysis perspective

The United States (US) and the People’s Republic of China (China) have the most patents in nanotechnology in their own depositories and overall in the international depositories. This paper compares nanotechnology landscapes between 2001 and 2017 as reflected in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA). It presents the evolution of nanotechnology patent development in the US and China, the differences between nanotechnology topics addressed in the USPTO and CNIPA patents, key players in nanotechnology fields in both domestic and foreign markets, and the player collaboration patterns. Bibliographic, content, and social network analyses are used. The longitudinal changes of granted patents and ranked countries, patent families, technology fields, and key players in domestic and overseas markets are outlined. Collaboration networks of assignees and the influential players have been identified based on network parameters. Results show that the US market attracts more international collaborations and has a higher level of knowledge exchange and resource sharing than the Chinese market. Companies play a vital role with regard to US nanotechnology development, resulting in more within-industry collaborations. In contrast, universities and research institutes are the dominant contributors to China’s nanotechnology development, leading to more academia-industry collaborations in China’s market.