One essential component in the construction of patent landscapes in biomedical research and development (R&D) is identifying the most seminal patents. Hitherto, the identification of seminal patents required subject matter experts within biomedical areas. In this brief communication, we report an analytical method and tool, Patent Citation Spectroscopy (PCS), for rapidly identifying landmark pa...

So-called “trivial” software patents undermine the patenting system and are detrimental for innovation. In this paper we use a case-based approach to get a better understanding of this phenomenon. First, we establish a baseline for studying the relation between software development and intellectual property rights by formulating a life cycle for the patenting system as well as three variations ...

The European area has developed a regional patenting system that has been evolving since the late 1970s. Major changes have been made to patenting procedures, patent rights, and patenting costs. Further changes are expected in the European region with the adoption of the Community Patent Convention (CPC), which will further streamline procedures and introduce new laws. The question of interest ...

2. Generality A patent that is being cited by a broader array of technology classes is viewed as having greater generality. Generality is calculated as the Herfindahl index of citing patents, used to capture the dispersion across technology classes of patents using the patent. To account for cases with a small number of patents within technology classes, I use the bias correction described in J...