Chapter 6: Science & Engineering Indicators 93

International Patenting Trends for Three Important Technologies

This section explores the relative strength of America's technological position by examining international patenting patterns in the critical technologies of advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, and information technology. (Click here for footnote 43.) To facilitate patent search and analysis, these broad technology areas were each represented by a narrower subfield: robot technology was used as a proxy for advanced manufacturing, genetic engineering (recombinant DNA--rDNA--techniques) was used for biotechnology, and optical fibers were used to represent patent activity in information technology. (Click here for footnote 44.) To ensure maximum comparability of data, the unit of analysis used in this discussion is built around the concept of a "patent family"--i.e., all the patent documents published in different countries associated with a single invention. (See "International Patent Families as a Basis of Comparison.")

In this section, three indicators are used to compare national positions in each critical technology.

Trends in international inventive activity: This indicator provides a first measure of the extent and growth of each nation's inventive activity important enough to be patented outside of the country of origin. These data are tabulated by priority year. (See "International Patent Families as a Basis of Comparison" for definition.) Since 18 months usually separate the patent filing date from the date of publication, available data may be incomplete prior to 1980 and after 1990; therefore, the period examined is 1980 to 1990. (Click here for footnote 45.)
Highly cited inventions: Interpatent citations are an accepted method of gauging the technological value or significance of different patents. (Click here for footnote 46.) These citations, provided by the patent examiner usually on the front page of a patent document, indicate the "prior art"--i.e., the technology in related fields of invention--that was taken into account in judging the novelty of the present invention. (Click here for footnote 47.) The number of citations a patent receives from later patents serves as an indicator of the original patent's technical importance or value. The technological significance indicator used here attempts to assess a country's contribution toward advancing the particular field of technology by determining the number of patent families from each priority country that are highly cited. (Click here for footnote 48.) "Highly cited" in this case means the top 1 percent of families in terms of the number of citations received. To normalize differences in number of patent families, a country's share of highly cited patents are divided by its share of total patent families.
International patent family size: Given the significant costs associated with obtaining patent protection in multiple countries, it can be assumed that the number of countries in which protection has been sought is an indicator of the perceived commercial potential of an invention. An indicator of relative national rankings of commercial potential is calculated by comparing mean family size for international patent families by priority country. (Click here for footnote 49.)

Footnote 42:

Data in this section are drawn from a database containing patent records from 33 major patenting countries, which facilitates a more comprehensive assessment of the U.S. technological position vis-a-vis other national competitors. These data were developed under contract for the National Science Foundation by Mogee Research & Analysis Associates; they were extracted from the World Patents Index database published by Derwent Publications, ltd.

Footnote 43:

The technology areas selected for this study met several criteria:

Each appeared on the lists of critical technologies considered important to future U.S. economic competitiveness or national security. (See Mogee 1991.)
Each is characterized by the output of patentable products or processes.
Each could be defined sufficiently to permit construction of accurate patent search strategies.
Each yielded a sufficient population for statistical analysis.

Footnote 44:

These subfields were identified based on a review of recent critical technologies reports and extensive consultation with National Science Foundation staff and experts in the technologies to determine representative subfields.

Footnote 45:

In many countries, patent applications are published, automatically, 18 months after the priority filing.

Footnote 46:

Carpenter, Narin, and Woolf (1981) show that technologically important U.S. patents on average receive twice as many examiner citations as does the average U.S. patent, thus helping to confirm the validity of interpatent citation as an indicator of patent quality. Albert, Avery, Narin, and McAllister (1991) show that citation counts prove to be a useful tool in identifying commercially important patents.

Footnote 47:

The citations counted are those placed on patents filed with the European Patent Office (EPO) by EPO examiners, since EPO citations are believed to be a less biased and broader source of citations than those of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. See Claus and Higham (1982).

Footnote 48:

Citation data are based on the total number of patent families, not just the international families.

Footnote 49:

Operationally, this means counting the number of countries in a family in which a patent publication (i.e., a published patent application or an issued patent) exists.

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