TY - JOUR
T1 - Worldwide nanotechnology development
T2 - A comparative study of USPTO, EPO, and JPO patents (1976-2004)
AU - Li, Xin
AU - Lin, Yiling
AU - Chen, Hsinchun
AU - Roco, Mihail C.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements This research is supported by the following awards: National Science Foundation: ‘‘Intelligent Patent Analysis for Nanoscale Science and Engineering,’’ IIS-0311652; ‘‘Mapping Nanotechnology Development,’’ DMI-0533749; and ‘‘Worldwide Nanotechnology Development: A Comparative Study of Global Patents’’ CMMI-0654232. The last co-author was supported by the Directorate for Engineering, NSF. We would like to thank USPTO, EPO, and JPO for making their databases available for research.
PY - 2007/12
Y1 - 2007/12
N2 - To assess worldwide development of nanotechnology, this paper compares the numbers and contents of nanotechnology patents in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), European Patent Office (EPO), and Japan Patent Office (JPO). It uses the patent databases as indicators of nanotechnology trends via bibliographic analysis, content map analysis, and citation network analysis on nanotechnology patents per country, institution, and technology field. The numbers of nanotechnology patents published in USPTO and EPO have continued to increase quasi-exponentially since 1980, while those published in JPO stabilized after 1993. Institutions and individuals located in the same region as a repository's patent office have a higher contribution to the nanotechnology patent publication in that repository ("home advantage" effect). The USPTO and EPO databases had similar high-productivity contributing countries and technology fields with large number of patents, but quite different high-impact countries and technology fields after the average number of received cites. Bibliographic analysis on USPTO and EPO patents shows that researchers in the United States and Japan published larger numbers of patents than other countries, and that their patents were more frequently cited by other patents. Nanotechnology patents covered physics research topics in all three repositories. In addition, USPTO showed the broadest representation in coverage in biomedical and electronics areas. The analysis of citations by technology field indicates that USPTO had a clear pattern of knowledge diffusion from highly cited fields to less cited fields, while EPO showed knowledge exchange mainly occurred among highly cited fields.
AB - To assess worldwide development of nanotechnology, this paper compares the numbers and contents of nanotechnology patents in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), European Patent Office (EPO), and Japan Patent Office (JPO). It uses the patent databases as indicators of nanotechnology trends via bibliographic analysis, content map analysis, and citation network analysis on nanotechnology patents per country, institution, and technology field. The numbers of nanotechnology patents published in USPTO and EPO have continued to increase quasi-exponentially since 1980, while those published in JPO stabilized after 1993. Institutions and individuals located in the same region as a repository's patent office have a higher contribution to the nanotechnology patent publication in that repository ("home advantage" effect). The USPTO and EPO databases had similar high-productivity contributing countries and technology fields with large number of patents, but quite different high-impact countries and technology fields after the average number of received cites. Bibliographic analysis on USPTO and EPO patents shows that researchers in the United States and Japan published larger numbers of patents than other countries, and that their patents were more frequently cited by other patents. Nanotechnology patents covered physics research topics in all three repositories. In addition, USPTO showed the broadest representation in coverage in biomedical and electronics areas. The analysis of citations by technology field indicates that USPTO had a clear pattern of knowledge diffusion from highly cited fields to less cited fields, while EPO showed knowledge exchange mainly occurred among highly cited fields.
KW - Information visualization
KW - Nanoscale science and engineering
KW - Nanotechnology
KW - Patent analysis
KW - Patent citations
KW - Research and development (R&D)
KW - Self-organizing maps
KW - Technological innovation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=34748850740&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=34748850740&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11051-007-9273-z
DO - 10.1007/s11051-007-9273-z
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:34748850740
SN - 1388-0764
VL - 9
SP - 977
EP - 1002
JO - Journal of Nanoparticle Research
JF - Journal of Nanoparticle Research
IS - 6
ER -