Analysis of essential patent portfolios via bibliometric mapping: an illustration of leading firms in the 4G era

Abstract

This study aims to analyse the essential patent portfolios of individual firms via bibliometric mapping. Based on the maps drawn via this method, important clusters of each company are analysed and two interpretations are made. As an illustration, the mobile phone industry is selected because standardisation is highly important for firms in this industry. Among others, long-term evolution (LTE) of the 4G era is chosen as a standard and Qualcomm, Nokia, Ericsson, and NTT DOCOMO are included as leading firms. As a result, firm-wise LTE essential patent portfolios were visualised. Based on the information given in these maps, two important clusters (i.e. the clusters composed of frequently emerging words and their periphery and the clusters including particularly noticeable terms) were analysed. In addition, two interpretations were made as follows. First, specialised and expandable technological clusters for each company (14 specialised/expandable clusters for Qualcomm, 8 for Nokia, 11 for Ericsson, and 10 for NTT DOCOMO) were identified. Second, appropriate cooperative strategies were devised according to the ownership patterns of technologies as follows. To begin with, if the technologies were owned by one company (e.g. multi-carriers, duplex channel, error correction), a non-cooperative strategy, such as non-exclusive licensing, was advised. Next, when the technology was owned by two companies (i.e. OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing)), a cooperative strategy, such as cross-licensing, was recommended. Finally, if the technologies were owned by multiple companies (i.e. MIMO (multi-input and multi-output) and data transmission), then a cooperative strategy, such as a patent pool, was proposed.

Pledging Patent Rights for Fighting Against the COVID-19: From the Ethical and Efficiency Perspective

“…Indeed, participating in patent pools can be regarded as a cooperative patent strategy adopted by patent holders (Han, 2015 ). As a patent pool has dual properties, patent holders can freely choose how to implement collaborative patent strategies but have to comply with the constraints of anti-trust law to reduce the anticompetitive effects.…”

Technical trends of artificial intelligence in standard-essential patents

“…Previous SEP studies have centered on motivation and rewards for companies to join SSOs and apply for SEPs (Bekkers et al, 2002;Berger et al, 2012;Blind et al, 2010;Layne-Farrar et al, 2014;Pohlmann et al, 2016;Rysman and Simcoe, 2008), as well as the technical features and current status of SEP development (Baron et al, 2016;Caviggiol et al, 2016;Kang et al, 2014); by contrast, few studies have focused on key technologies or development trends of technical standards through SEP observation. In addition, although some recent studies have conducted detailed investigations on the patent holders and technical frameworks of specific technologies (Han, 2015;Trappey et al, 2017), such studies are capable only of illustrating current technical development or knowledge systems; they cannot concretely pin down key technologies of technical standards. Therefore, the present study adopted a technical network perspective and presented a holistic technical review of SEPs.…”

Cultivating Intellectual Property Education in the Electronics Engineering Curriculum: A Case Study in Integrated Circuit Design

“…Complex design specifications related with multidisciplinary knowledge are the key challenges in teaching. In addition, obtaining patents and licensing patents in ICs, and fighting against infringing competitors are the crucial consideration of the engineering practices [31]. It is therefore of a great interest to study the general IP rules and methods of novelty retrieval in learning of design techniques in the current curriculum.…”