Water treatment technology development supports a steady, safe water supply. This study examines trends in water treatment technology innovations, using 227,365 patent granted data published from 1993 to 2016 as an indicator of changing research and development (R&D) priorities. To clarify changes in R&D priorities, we used a decomposition analysis framework that classified water treatment tech...

Patent trolls—firms that appropriate profits from innovation by enforcing patents against infringers—are peculiar players on markets for technologies. As buyers of patents, they are solely interested in the exclusion right, not in the underlying knowledge. Similarly, when they sell or license out patents, the transaction does not involve a technology transfer. In this paper, we empirically anal...

Patents have great public visibility these days; questions and opinions abound on the fairness of the patent system, the validity of large amount of patents, and the rights of the “haves” versus the “have nots”. There are questions around the fundamental nature of the patent system – whether patents are protecting and fostering innovation, or whether they have begun to hurt innovation. In this ...

We present the application of a new knowledge visualization tool, VxInsight, to the mapping and analysis of patent databases. Patent data are mined and placed in a database, relationships between the patents are identified, primarily using the citation and classification structures, then the patents are clustered using a proprietary force-directed placement algorithm. Related patents cluster to...

IT industry has become patent-intensive due to the rapid advances in technology and the fierce competition among firms. While prior studies indicate financial returns from investments in IT patents are unclear, recent patent wars in IT industry suggest that IT patents may be of great value. We examine the impact of IT patents as an intangible IT resource on firm value in IT industry, while also...

Patents from papers both basic and applied Public funding for research depends on the idea that the resulting knowledge translates into socially valuable outcomes, such as medicines. Such linkages are easier to assert than to prove. Li et al. studied 27 years of grantlevel funding by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. About 10% of grants are directly cited by patents, suggesting some techn...

In recent years, companies have increasingly come to recognize the value of design patents to protect their intellectual property (IP). For example, the dispute between Apple and Samsung over smartphone and tablet computers involved several patents, some of which were design patents. The jury in that case awarded Apple more than $1 billion in damages. The jury’s award was notable not only for i...

Nanobiotechnology is a result of converging length scales of study in various technological fields. For example, traditional materials engineering focused on the properties of bulk materials, chemistry focused on atomic and molecular level interactions, physics focused on subatomic phenomena, and biology focused on organic molecular and supramolecular interactions. Now, with powerful imaging an...