Patents as instruments for exploring innovation dynamics: geographic and technological perspectives on “photovoltaic cells”

Leydesdorff, Loet; Alkemade, Floortje; Heimeriks, Gaston; Hoekstra, Rinke

doi:10.1007/s11192-014-1447-8

Cited by 57 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Scholars have also developed techniques to trace the dynamics of the patenting activities (e.g., Kay et al., ; Schoen et al., ). The nodes of these maps are technological classes that, as in the case of previous maps, are linked by cross‐citation (cosine) similarity (Leydesdorff, Alkemade, Heimeriks, & Hoekstra, ; Leydesdorff et al., ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategic intelligence on emerging technologies: Scientometric overlay mapping

Rotolo

Ràfols

Hopkins

et al. 2015

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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This paper examines the use of scientometric overlay mapping as a tool of "strategic intelligence" to aid the governing of emerging technologies. We develop an integrative synthesis of different overlay mapping techniques and associated perspectives on technological emergence across geographical, social, and cognitive spaces. To do so, we longitudinally analyze (with publication and patent data) three case studies of emerging technologies in the medical domain. These are RNA interference (RNAi), human papillomavirus (HPV) testing technologies for cervical cancer, and thiopurine methyltransferase (TPMT) genetic testing. Given the flexibility (i.e., adaptability to different sources of data) and granularity (i.e., applicability across multiple levels of data aggregation) of overlay mapping techniques, we argue that these techniques can favor the integration and comparison of results from different contexts and cases, thus potentially functioning as a platform for "distributed" strategic intelligence for analysts and decision makers.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategic intelligence on emerging technologies: Scientometric overlay mapping

Rotolo

Ràfols

Hopkins

et al. 2015

Asso for Info Science & Tech

Self Cite

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“…Such articles provide corroborating evidence as the performance of PCS (cf. Leydesdorff, Alkemade, Heimeriks, & Hoekstra, 2015). In sum, the technique enables us to find the foundational patent and to pursue the analysis from there.…”

Section: Applying Patent Citation Spectroscopy To Materials Photovoltamentioning

confidence: 99%

Data-Mining the Foundational Patents of Photovoltaic Materials: An Application of Patent Citation Spectroscopy

Comins¹,

Leydesdorff²

2018

JSCIRES

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Keeping abreast of most technologically important patents is also a challenging task for patent granting organizations and patenting inventors and firms. As a consequence, patent offices have invested in developing novel automated approaches for identifying landmark patents in technology areas. Patent Citation Spectroscopy (PCS) provides a web-application to answer this question within minutes.Patents branch out in tree-like structures along trajectories. The historical root, or seminal, patent can be followed using sequences of patent citations. The algorithmic method of PCS presented in this study provides a solution to the problem where to begin the analysis of a technological development. PCS enables the user to retrieve the fundamental patent in any technological domain using a topical search. This application thus orients the user strategically.The online data-mining method of PCS is based on Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS) technique, a methodology developed for use on academic literature. However, PCS includes additional normalization calculations to disentangle citation outliers based on the outstanding performance of a single document as compared to a group of documents.To illustrate the value of PCS, we provide the results of a search for the seminal patents of the nine CPC subclasses pertaining to photovoltaic solar cells, a key area of technological innovation. Research and development (R&D) in photovoltaic devices continues to yield greater efficiencies, offering the potential to lower the cost of solar energy (Chu et al, 2016). As these advances in solar technology become primed for penetrating the global energy system, an understanding of the key patents and inventors in photovoltaic materials will assist decisionmakers in understanding the R&D landscape (Polman et al, 2016). We demonstrate that such searches are easily completed via PCS in each of the nine CPC subclasses. Searches of scholarly article databases validated the results obtained through PCS in five of the nine classes.

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“…Patent classification codes have been employed to measure relatedness between technical fields (Joo, 2010) and to point out interconnections or distances between technologies using complex visualizations (Leydesdorff, 2008, Leydesdorff, Alkemade, Heimeriks, & Hoekstra, 2015, Bowen & Luo, 2016.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of patent citations as a footprint of technology

Perez-Molina

2017

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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The fact that patents are documents highly constrained by law and structured by international treaties make them a unique body of publications for tracing the history and evolution of technology. The distinctiveness of prior art patent citations compared to bibliographic references in the nonpatent literature is discussed. Starting from these observations and using the patent classification scheme as a framework of reference, we have identified a data structure, the “technology footprint,” derived from the patents cited as prior art for a selected set of patents. This data structure will provide us with dynamic information about the technological components of the selected set of patents, which represents a technology, company, or inventor. Two case studies are presented in order to illustrate the visualization of the technology footprint: one concerning an inventor—Mr. Engelbart, the inventor of the “computer mouse”—and another concerning the early years of a technology—computerized tomography.

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Patents as instruments for exploring innovation dynamics: geographic and technological perspectives on “photovoltaic cells”

Cited by 57 publications

References 40 publications

Strategic intelligence on emerging technologies: Scientometric overlay mapping

Strategic intelligence on emerging technologies: Scientometric overlay mapping

Data-Mining the Foundational Patents of Photovoltaic Materials: An Application of Patent Citation Spectroscopy

The role of patent citations as a footprint of technology

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