Clearing the Fog: Patenting Trends for the Treatment of Alzheimer‘s Disease

Abstract

This article asks, "What can Network Patent Analysis™ (NPA) tell us about developments in the treatment of this serious condition?" Patents filed for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease have been analyzed by NPA. NPA is an unique patent analysis method that maps the 'collective intelligence' of the patent applicants to group and rank patents, technologies and patent applicants. A search for Alzheimer's disease patents identified approximately 24,000 patents, to which we added 24,000 citationally connected patents. NPA identified the leading 2,153 patents in the combined 48,000 patents and grouped most of these 2153 patents into 23 subject clusters. The 23 clusters of patents fall into two major groupings: drugs targeted to the β-amyloid protein ('amyloid grouping'); and drugs targeted to the Tau/serotonin and other alternative pathways ('Tau grouping'). Filing activity for the 2153 strongest patents peaked between the year 2000 and 2005. This, along with the broad range of subject matter in the patent clusters, suggests that Alzheimer's disease treatments are still undergoing strong development.

Research and development of anti-Alzheimer’s drugs: an analysis based on technology flows measured by patent citations

“…However, research and development (R&D) of anti-AD drugs is rarely studied from the aspect of technology flows, although it has been well reviewed from a technology perspective [2,[15][16][17][18]. In view of the importance of the treatment of AD, a similar study focusing on leading patents in this field has been conducted, but it is not to the point of technology flows [19]. Our study differs from others in its examination of anti-AD drugs' technology flows using patent citation network analysis to provide dynamic insights into its R&D activities.…”

Intellectual Property and Biofuels: The Energy Crisis, Food Security, and Climate Change

“…A network patent analysis can be deployed to analyse citation connections in order to determine the most important patent groupings and patents. Ambercite and Griffith Hack comment that a “network patent analysis” consists of “a set of analytical and visualisation tools that use citation links to both group patents of similar technologies and rank patents” (Lloyd et al ., ). They maintain that “[l]arge numbers of patents can be analysed to ensure statistical reliability, with up to 250,000 patents and one million citation linkages being analysed in some studies” (Lloyd et al, ).…”

“…The technique of network patent analysis has been previously deployed in a number of contexts. The tool has been applied to the contested field of the smartphone patent wars (Lloyd et al ., ), and has been used in the medical field to provide an overview of the leading patents, research and applicants in respect of patenting trends for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (Lloyd et al ., ). In the field of patent law and clean technologies, network patent analysis has been a powerful tool to understand the conflicts over hybrid car technologies (Lloyd and Blows, ) – in particular, the dispute between Paice and Toyota (Lloyd and Spielthenner, ).…”