TRENDS IN BIOENGINEERING PATENTS GRANTED 2000 - 2019

Patent documents contain a wealth of technical information on inventions, often unavailable elsewhere. They are likely underutilized as sources of information about trends in fields of development. Querying patent databases can be challenging, given the inadequacy of keywords and the complex nature of patent classification systems. A collection of Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) main codes were identified that likely relate to patents in bioengineering and biomedical engineering. These codes were used in queries of the free patent search engine that is available from a Lens.org database. Results were filtered for applications or granted patents by patent families to identify trends in inventions within the field from 2000 to 2019. A patent family represents the collection of documents relating to a single invention given that applications are frequently filed in multiple countries. Although patent applications and unique inventions remained steady, the annual number of patents granted has increased from 2000 to 2016. A decline in numbers of granted patents since 2016 is indicative of the lag time of several years between application filing and a determination of patent status. Applicants with high productivity in obtaining granted patents include large international companies as well as some large universities.

Patent value index

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.

When do the USPTO examiners cite as the EPO examiners? An analysis of examination spillovers through rejection citations at the international family-to-family level

This paper empirically examines coincidences between “rejection citations” (i.e., those cited as grounds for rejections) added by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and “X/Y patent citations,” which are also added as grounds for rejections at the European Patent Office (EPO) within the same patent family, based on more than forty thousand families of triadic application sample. We consider the release timing of European search reports and the timing of rejection actions by the USPTO for the same family of patent applications. We find that the frequency of rejection (X/Y-equivalent) citation coincidences between the USPTO and the EPO according to family-to-family citation criteria increases after the release of search reports by the EPO. It suggests that the US examiners capture spillovers of search efforts from the EPO, namely, the USPTO examiners rely on prior art information collected and disclosed by the EPO. The results also reveal that International Search Reports (ISRs) prepared for Patent Corporation Treaty (PCT) applications, as well as applicant-submitted citations, play important roles for the convergence of rejection citations between the two patent offices. We furthermore find that the US examiners are less likely to add the same patent citations as the EPO examiners when rejections are persistently repeated at the USPTO. The methodology in this paper introduces the novel use of patent examiner citations to compare examiners’ citing behavior across jurisdictions.

Geocoding of worldwide patent data

The dataset provides geographic coordinates for inventor and applicant locations in 18.8 million patent documents spanning over more than 30 years. The geocoded data are further allocated to the corresponding countries, regions and cities. When the address information was missing in the original patent document, we imputed it by using information from subsequent filings in the patent family. The resulting database can be used to study patenting activity at a fine-grained geographic level without creating bias towards the traditional, established patent offices.

Identification of Core Technology of Digital SPC Exchange and Intelligentialize Prospect of Electronic Communication Equipment Industry

digital SPC switch belongs to the communication system equipment manufacturing class and belongs to the high-tech industry. Mastering the core technology of digital SPC switch is related to communication security and national information security. HuaWei has already mastered the core technology of digital SPC switch, and on this basis has accumulated the core technology capability to develop intelligently. In this paper, patent data is used to analyze the patent family of digital SPC switches at home and abroad, and based on this analysis and identification of core technologies, and finally, the intelligent development direction of the industry is predicted.