Patent analysis is an important approach to technology forecasting because patents are an important component of developing technology. Also, we use the results of technology forecasting to build the R&D strategies efficiently. In this paper, we consider patent clustering as one of patent analyses. That is, we cluster patent documents in order to forecast the vacant area of a given technology f...

“Patent ambush” describes certain rent-seeking behavior by the owner of patent rights to a technology that is essential to an industry standard. Two cases, Qualcomm and Rambus, represent attempts of the Third and D.C. Circuits, respectively, to address patent ambushes using federal antitrust statutes. In both cases, antitrust law proves inadequate to the task. Under Qualcomm, licensees gain too...

While each patent dispute is unique, most fit the profile of one of a limited number of patent litigation stories. A dispute between an independent inventor and a large company, for instance, is often cast in " David v. Goliath " terms. When two large companies fight over patents, in contrast, they are said to be playing the " sport of kings. " Some corporations engage in " defensive patenting ...

BACKGROUND Patents are one of the most important forms of intellectual property. They grant a time-limited exclusivity on the use of an invention allowing the recuperation of research costs. The use of patents is fiercely debated for medical innovation and especially controversial for publicly funded research, where the patent holder is an institution accountable to public interest. Despite thi...

The use of patent citations as a measure of patent "quality" increased dramatically in recent years. I estimate the hazard of patent citation, and find evidence of unobserved heterogeneity. Hazard estimation provides a means to separate patent quality from citation "inflation." JEL: C1, O3.

The fundamental idea of patent systems is to protect inventors who have invested resources during the development of their invention. Patent trolls abuse these systems by filing obvious patents with significantly less cost and usually without the intention to produce or offer the invention. Instead, patent trolls sue other companies that allegedly violate their obvious patents. We propose a met...

Patents are an important source of technological intelligence that companies can use to gain strategic advantage and computational patent mapping is a methodology for the development and application of a technology knowledgebase for technology and competitive intelligence. The primary deliverables of patent mapping is in the form of knowledge visualization through landscape and maps. This paper...

In the patent domain Boolean retrieval is particularly common. But despite the importance of Boolean retrieval, there is not much work in current research assisting patent experts in formulating such queries. Currently, these approaches are mostly limited to the usage of standard dictionaries, such as WordNet, to provide synonymous expansion terms. In this paper we present a new approach to sup...

Cumulative innovation is central to economic growth. Do patent rights facilitate or impede such follow-on innovation? This paper studies the effect of removing patent protection through court invalidation on the subsequent research related to the focal patent, as measured by later citations. We exploit random allocation of judges at the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit to control fo...