Foreign applications at the Japan Patent Office - An empirical analysis of selected growth factors

This article aims to evaluate some of the possible factors which could have had a significant role in the increase in the yearly number of foreign patent applications at the Japan Patent Office. The analysed period ranges from 1991 to 2005. In the years considered, foreign applications increased constantly while the number of domestic filings remained almost the same or even decreased. The increase is more striking when compared to analogous figures of the US Patent and Trademark Office and the European Patent Office, where the corresponding ratio did not change too much in the same period. Building on previous literature, this paper analyses the impact of some macroeconomic and structural characteristics of the extending countries, on one side, and, on the other side, some features specific to the receiving country and its Patent Office (here Japan and the JPO). This work tries to capture the relevance of such drivers in the increased amount of foreign patent applications at the JPO.     

Do references in transferred patent documents signal learning opportunities for the receiving firms?

In this study, we empirically investigate the role of references in patents in a firm’s technological learning and innovation when the patents are transferred (i.e., technology licensing activities) to these firms. This study is based on a sample of 68 Chinese high-tech firms that engaged in patent technology licensing while using a matching sample of non-licensee firms, and it examines covered patents in licensee agreements that were originally registered in the European Patent Office between 2000 and 2005. Empirical results indicate that the reference scope (defined as the number of different patent classes—classes that the examined patent does not belong to—in the backward citations) and the time lag of the backward citations each has a positive effect and a negative effect on the licensee firms’ innovation outcomes respectively, measured as the number of Chinese patent applications during the 5 years after the licensing year. However, it failed to find a positive effect of the science-based citations (defined as backward citations to journal articles) as we predicted.     

Modernization of the Danish Patent Office

The article describes the problems which built up in the Danish Patent Office from 1977 to 1983, when it was thought that the government would ratify the European Patent Convention, and the steps taken since then to modernize the Office and deal with the staff problems and the backlogs which had built up when it became clear that ratification would not be achieved. The backlog of 40 000 pending patent applications was trimmed by over 7000 applications in which there was now no interest, extra staff engaged, outside training assistance sought, and a large computerisation program initiated. Efficiency of the technical staff resources is enhanced by postponing the examination of priority claiming applications until information of the progress of these applications to grant in one of a number of specified countries is obtained from the INPADOC PFS and PRS databases. The modernization of the Office, which is directed towards its internal structures and procedures, has for its purpose the improvement not only of services to applicants for industrial property rights, but also of services to users of patent information.     

Patent analyses in the changed legal regime of the US Patent Law since 2001

In 2001, a new ruling for the publication of patent applications at the United States Patent and Trademark Office came into effect. Since then, all applications which are also filed with foreign offices have to be published 18 months after the application date, in analogy to the ruling in Europe and Japan. This new regime replaces the former system where only granted patents were published. With about 70% of all applications the share of pre-grant publications of applications of US origin is quite high, allowing new types of statistical analysis. In particular, the investigations of time series based on priority years instead of grant years can thus be performed much more topically. On the one hand, a larger dataset for applications of US origin is available; on the other hand, the sample of applications from Asian countries is generally much larger at the US Patent Office than at the European Patent Office. Despite these new opportunities, searches at low levels of aggregation by codes of the International Patent Classification still have to be handled with care.     

The patent system and the medium-sized industry

The statistics of the German Patent Office reveal that the majority of patent applications are filed by small and medium-sized industries (SMI) or private inventors and so confirm the importance of this sector for the technological innovation. However, many SMI do not make full use of the possible protection patenting offers them, and the importance for SMI of exploiting the patent literature as a source of technical information has only recently been acknowledged. There are many possible explanations of this reticence on the part of SMI, a number of them are analysed in the article, together with the advantages of patent protection. It is concluded that the Patent Office ought to make an effort to make access to its stock of information easier and more effective.     

Patent information services of the Swiss Federal Intellectual Property Office (SIPO)

The patent information services offered by the Swiss Federal Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) are discussed. These services comprise: information from the SIPO computer about patent applications or patents relating to Switzerland and Liechtenstein; patent document collections available in the reading room of SIPO; access to databases made available by the European Patent Office (EPO); access to external scientific, technical and patent databases via the Technical Information Service Patents (TIPAT); patent and other document delivery services.     

Study of automated text searching of U.S. patents

A comparative study of automated full text searching of U.S. patent documents with manual, classified document searches was conducted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in a number of technology areas. The same twelve patent applications from each technology were searched by two examiners using either computer terminals providing access to an electronic database containing the full text of the patents (but no drawings) or the classified paper files of the Office. Comparisons of the search methods were based on the actions taken by the examiners in rejecting or not rejecting the patent claims in the applications. Manual and automated full text searching resulted in similar claims actions but the documents cited were different. Overall automated text searching resulted in the citation of more references. About 28% of the cited references from automated searches could not have been found by manual searches since they were outside the classified fields of search.     

Assessing the value of patent portfolios: an international country comparison

Patent counts have been extensionally used to measure the innovative capacities of countries. However, since economic values of patents may differ, simple patent counts may give misleading rankings, if the patents of one country are on average more valuable than those of another. In the literature several methods have been proposed, which shall adjust for these differences. However, often these do not possess a solid economic micro-foundation and therefore are often ad-hoc and arbitrary procedures. In this paper, we intend to present an adjustment method that is based on the analysis of renewal decisions. The method builds on the theoretical model used in Schankerman and Pakes (1986) and Besson (2008) but goes beyond both approaches in that it recovers the important long tail of the value distribution. It also transfers Besson’s (2008) econometric methodology (applicable to the organisational structures of the US Patent and Trademark Office) also to the European Patent Office which is necessary, since each application here may split up into several national patent documents. The analysis is performed for 22 countries. Exemplarily, we find that in the cohort of 1986 patent applications, Danish patents are about 60% more valuable than the average patent. German patents are a bit below average. Japanese patents are of least value. In the cohort of 1996, Danish patents lose some of their lead but are still more valuable than the average. While German are a bit above average, Japanese patents even fall further behind (possibly due to the economic downturn in since the mid of 1990ies).     

Exploration of the evolution of nanotechnology via mapping of patent applications

This study explored the evolution of nanotechnology based on a mapping of patent applications. Citations among patent applications designated to the European Patent Office were intensively analysed. Approximately 4300 nanotechnology patent applications linked through citations were mapped. Fifteen domains of nanotechnology patent applications were found in the map in 2003. The domains cover a wide range of application fields; they are domains related to measurement and manufacturing; electronics; optoelectronics; biotechnology; and nano materials. Maps in several reference years registered the evolution of nanotechnology, where the breadth of application fields has been broadening over time. Direct and indirect knowledge flows among different domains of nanotechnology are seemingly small at the present. Each domain of nanotechnology is likely pushing the technological frontier within its own domain. The exception is sensing and actuating technologies on the nanometre scale. Direct and indirect knowledge flows to/from this domain describe their vital role in nanotechnology. Countries’ specialisation was also analysed. Patent applications from the United States and the European Union cover a wide range of nanotechnology. Inventive activities in Japan are, however, strongly focusing on electronics. Intensive knowledge creation in specific technologies was found in Switzerland and Korea.     

European patent filings in 1985–1990: National time series with comparative analysis

This article concerns patent statistics. The number of published European Patent Applications field between 1985 and 1990 is considered. It appears that, during this period, eight countries have filed 90% of the totality, while all the other nations are individually below the threshold of 1.5%. In this set of eight nations, three groups can be identified: United States of America, Japan and Federal Republic of Germany are above 6000 applications per year, France and United Kingdom between 2500 and 6000 per year, and Italy, The Netherlands and Switzerland are below 2500 applications per year. For these nations, the number of applications filed, arranged according to filing year and applicant's country, is presented by tables and graphics. National trends are considered, and a comparison is presented.     

Automated patent searching: Preliminary results of USPTO studies

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has begun development of a ‘paperless’ automated system to replace its paper search files. In order to answer several questions related to automated operation, the US Office conducted a number of studies involving commercial patent search systems. The results of these studies are summarized in this paper.     

Automating the United States Patent and Trademark Office: A plan for the 1990s

To carry out its mission, the United States Patent and Trademark Office processes and examines over 100 000 patent and 60 000 trademark applications annually. The already large body of information against which those applications must be compared is growing rapidly. Since the files are paper and loosely assembled to facilitate searching, their integrity is degrading steadily because of lost or misfiled documents. These factors threaten to compromise the quality, even the viability, of the patent grant and the trademark registration.A cost-effective and technologically reliable alternative to this paper-oriented system is clearly needed. During the past two years, the USPTO has undertaken a major research and planning effort to develop a more efficient process through the use of computer technology. This article highlights the major aspects of a long-range strategy to achieve the goal of a fully automated patent and trademark operation by the year 1990.     

Legal Validity Metrics for Patent Offices and Law Firms – Recycling of Patent Court Appeal Decisions for Quality Management

In all relevant patent systems an adversely affected party has the possibility to appeal the patent office's decision in front of a patent court or Board of Appeal (BoA). Within a European context, the EPO is, in a way, even engaging in de facto competition with national patent offices. As an example, the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) provides quasi identical patent products and offers the same kind of legal recourse to the German patent court (BPatGer) for these products. Both offices offer an opposition procedure which is open for appeal, and also in the case of a refusal, both offices offer the possibility of appeals. Thus, the EPO Boards of Appeal are engaged in making decisions every year on around 2000 cases and, e.g., the BPatGer on 600 cases regarding the legal validity of the first instance's work. It is thus remarkable that, so far, nobody has systematically included the work of the patent courts in a statistical legal validity evaluation in the context of the Patent & Trademark Offices' (PTOs') quality assurance systems.Since there is obviously a need to establish a common standard for the comparison of first and second instance legal teachings in patent law, a methodology for comparative legal validity analysis is proposed in this paper. I have tested and optimised the approach while working as a project manager at the European Patent Office, based on analysis of 2300 appeal decisions from seven annual batches.     

Progress report on the establishment of a Patent Information Centre (informationszentrum patente) in the Federal Republic of Germany

The author describes the structure of the sectorial information centre for patent information (IZ 17) which is being established in the Federal Republic of Germany as central information service under the responsibility of the German Patent Office. The local patent information services will be incorporated in the system. Details are further given on the work of the user's working party 17, which since April 1980 has taken part in the planning of the information centre by the German Patent Office.     

Abridgments of British patents — The end of an era

The Patent Law Amendment Act of 1852 and the coming into being of the “modern” British Patent Office is briefly mentioned. In 1852 Bennet Woodcroft F.R.S. was appointed Superintendent of the specifications and it was his idea to publish abridgments of each patent specification so that searches could be readily conducted in the Patent Office Library (or at home if the abridgments were purchased). The four series of abridgments covering the years from 1617 (or earlier in some cases) to the present day are described. Patent applications currently being published under the Patents Act 1977 contain abstracts of the specification on their front pages and there are several important differences between these abstracts and all the earlier series of abridgments. These differences are discussed and commented on and it is found that there are both advantages and disadvantages in the new system.     

Applied patent mining with topic models and meta-data: A comprehensive case study

The number of patent applications has grown to a size that makes it necessary to process a large amount of data as automated as possible. For professionals analyzing technical developments, there is much need for quickly gaining an overview of a technical domain. We have conducted a large case study that covers over 3 years of work at the Austrian Patent Office, where we developed a toolchain of text mining methods for use by patent experts. Thus, acceptance by the domain expert community has been the major factor in our study. Apart from practical aspects, we experimented with a method to enrich the usual pure text-based topic modeling approaches with available meta-data in the form of IPC symbols, in an attempt to guide the topics towards readily recognizable labels. In this work, we describe this set of tools and the best practices and lessons learned during this extensive period, covering 7 case studies, out of which we describe two in detail.     

AIDB, the Italian Patent Information Users Group

The Italian Patent Information Users Group (AIDB—Associazione Italiana Documentalisti Brevettuali) was founded on February 24, 2004. At the end of that year, AIDB had 58 members, coming from different environments such as industry, private practice, public institutions, and content providers. During its first months of existence, AIDB coordinated various activities such as checking the extent and quality of documentation services offered by the Italian Patent and Trade Mark Office (UIBM), and promoting discussions about suitable certification schemes for professional patent searchers. In November 2004, AIDB organized a two-day national patent information conference, focused on the business impact of patent information and on the certification of patent searchers.     

The international preliminary examination of patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty — a proxy for patent value?

One way to achieve international patent protection is to file patents via the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). The application process therein can be divided into two phases, those represented by chapters I and II of the PCT. According to the literature, patent applications filed via chapter II of the Treaty tend to be more valuable. The results presented in this paper suggest that in general this assumption is not justified. The analyses further revealed that for practitioners seeking fast patent protection at the European Patent Office (EPO) via the PCT, the choice should be chapter II of the PCT, with the EPO as preliminary examination authority.