Discovering and assessing fields of expertise in nanomedicine: a patent co-citation network perspective

Abstract

Document publié chez l'éditeur commercial ABSTRACTDiscovering and assessing fields of expertise in emerging technologies from patent data is not straightforward. First, patent classification in an emerging technology being far from complete, the definitions of the various applications of its inventions are embedded within communities of practice. Because patents must contain full record of prior art, co-citation networks can, in theory, be used to identify and delineate the inventive effort of these communities of practice. However, the use patent citations for the purpose of measuring technological relatedness is not obvious because they can be added by examiners. Second, the assessment of the development stage of emerging industries has been mostly done through simple patent counts. Because patents are not all valuable, a better way of evaluating an industry's stage of development would be to use multiple patent quality metrics as well as economic activity agglomeration indicators. The purpose of this article is to validate the use of 1) patent citations as indicators of technological relatedness, and 2) multiple indicators for assessing an industry's development stage. Greedy modularity optimization of the 'Canadian-made' nanotechnology patent co-citation network shows that patent citations can effectively be used as indicators of technological relatedness. Furthermore, the use of multiple patent quality and economic agglomeration indicators offers better assessment and forecasting potential than simple patent counts.

Distant recombination and the creation of basic inventions: An analysis of the diffusion of public and private sector nanotechnology patents in Canada

“…It is also worth discussing the relationship between variables NPRS, PRIVATE and NANOBIO. These results corroborate findings about the nature of activities in the biotechnology industry (Barirani et al, 2013), compared to the other two industries. Indeed, we can see that public institutions are more present in the nanobiotechnology industry.…”

“…Li et al (2007) show that the US is the first foreign destination in which Canadian firms file for patents. Barirani et al (2013) offer a lexical query for the extraction and clustering of technologically similar "Canadian-made" nanotechnology patents. The study identifies three broad fields of expertise in Canada: nanobiotechnology, display technologies and optics.…”

“…Prior studies indicate that within the three major areas of expertise, nanobiotechnology (encompassing nanotechnology-based pharmaceutical and biotechnology applications) is a science-based industry with low levels of concentration of patents in few firms (Barirani et al, 2013). Indeed, public institutions play a central role in the patent co-citation network.…”

The consolidation of nanomedicine

“…Failure to comply bears drastic consequences: a patent may be declared unenforceable for its term (Erstling, 2011). Therefore, citations serve as a good indicator for the prior art that was relied on when inventing (Barirani, Agard, & Beaudry, 2013). Corresponding information was extracted from PatentsView, as well.…”

Examiner trust in applicants to the European Patent Office: country specificities

“…Some works emphasized the importance of distinguishing whether the citation was introduced by the applicant or the examiner to avoid biases in the study of knowledge flows (Thompson 2006 ; Alcácer and Gittelman 2006 ; Criscuolo and Verspagen 2008 ; Azagra-Caro et al 2009 ). 1 Later works have argued that each type of citation is useful to analyze different phenomena (Acosta et al 2013 ; Barirani et al 2013 ; Li et al 2014 ; Yasukawa and Kano 2014 ). However, none discusses the interpretation of the probability of applicant citations.…”