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AbstractIntroductionMethodsResultsDiscussionConclusionsIndividual researcher impact through scientific citations is carefully monitored, with little attention to the impact of individual journals through policy and patent mentions. We aimed to describe policy and patent mentions for articles published in Clinical Toxicology.Using Altmetric Explorer, we extracted mentions from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2023, noting the citing source, Clinical Toxicology article title, and author-generated keywords. We used descriptive statistics to analyse the data.We identified 165 individual policy documents (n = 139) and patents (n = 26), citing 146 articles with median of 6.4 years between publication and mention. The highest number of citing documents were by the World Health Organization (n = 45), European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (n = 22), and United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (n = 16). Most patents were registered in the United States (n = 17) and by the European Patent Office (n = 10), with the main classification of human necessities (n = 23). The commonest subjects of papers cited in policy and patents, from keywords, related to medical conditions and symptoms (26%) and recreational drugs (22%). The most cited article was “A systematic review of adverse events arising from the use of synthetic cannabinoids and their associated treatment.”Clinical Toxicology articles are cited in policy documents and patents, with a comparable number of mentions to the top-ranked journals in the field. This likely contributes to policy impact, but further work is needed to understand how cited articles are used and ripple effects through onwards citations of policy documents.Clinical Toxicology is a toxicology journal for which published research gets recognised within influential policy sources. The Journal can play a key role in guiding public health policy through its selection and development of submitted publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here, we look at the impact of the scientific production of Brazilian research institutions. Data were collected from SciVal and InCites for governmental research institutions (state and federal), and then we focussed on the two largest: Embrapa (Agriculture) and Fiocruz (Health). Institutions in the area of health, environment and physics tended to show higher impact than other areas, those in physics showed low first, last and corresponding authorships (<20%). Health institutions had a high profile in Policy and Patents, especially abroad, while agriculture had a more local impact. Citations in policy documents increased impact by 220%. Brazilian institutions in Defence, Agriculture, Energy & Nuclear, and Economic areas generally perform below world means. While some institutions may show a higher impact on specific indicators, the present study raises the need for an in-depth analysis of these institutions and their return on investments. Information contained here can help these institutions in strategic planning to improve impact results, including the uptake of science by the Brazilian government. While Fiocruz seems to meet this demand, Embrapa still needs to reaffirm its space within the system. Discussion on the return on investment (monetary and other resources) made in institutions these institutions require future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With an emphasis on the European Renewable Energy Clusters (RECs), the study examines the impact of local and global collaborations on technological competitiveness within RECs. Drawing on illustrative examples from wind and solar energy clusters in Europe, the research challenges the prevailing notion of the need for extensive global collaborations for innovation. Instead, it highlights the pivotal role of local collaborations and technologically homophile community ties in sustaining technological competitiveness within green high-tech clusters. The article contributes to the green-tech innovation and clusters literature by providing valuable insights into how companies in clusters engage in patent collaborations, particularly in the context of green energy technologies. The study spans the period from 1998 to 2018, offering a comprehensive analysis of collaborations in two mature renewable energies: wind and solar. It particularly investigates the Wind cluster in Navarra, Spain and the Munich Solar cluster in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research emphasizes the increasing role of emerging countries in the advancement of future technologies and investigates the extent to which greenfield foreign direct investments (FDIs) can represent a bridge capable of stimulating technological collaboration opportunities between European regions and emerging countries. Utilizing a balanced panel dataset spanning 15 years from 2003 to 2017 and covering 286 European regions, we conducted a study that integrated collaborative patent data and foreign investments with emerging countries. Our findings indicate that technological collaboration primarily depends on inward FDIs (from emerging countries to Europe) rather than outward FDIs (from Europe to emerging countries). Furthermore, we discovered that a mutually reinforcing process can significantly enhance this collaboration. In this context, such a process acts as a cornerstone for the European Union (EU), offering a potential solution to navigate the paradoxical pressure between the rise of protectionism in response to the imbalances and inequalities stemming from globalization and the need to promote an environment conducive to global openness, competition and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social contract is one of the most common schemes for justifying patents. According to this theory, inventors obtain a commercial exclusivity in exchange for the disclosure of the invention, with the final aim of allowing others to use that knowledge in future innovations. Under the rationale of this social contract theory of patents, if a patent system is not guided by impartiality in its decisions, the relation between disclosure of inventions and future innovation becomes an issue, because non-merit factors in patent examination influence the quality of the knowledge disclosed. The aim of this article is to analyse impartiality in patent systems and, by doing so, defend that there is an epistemic side on both impartiality and social contract theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the threshold effect of R&D behaviour on financial performance by using the Chinese electronic equipment manufacturing industry as the sample. Results in this study reveal the co-effect of innovation input (R&D) and output (patents) on corporate financial performance, while patent output has a threshold effect that allows financial performance to be enhanced via R&D input, and the relationship between patent output and financial performance changes significantly when R&D input is used as a threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The right of priority established in the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property allows a patent applicant to claim the filing date of a first application for any subsequent applications for the same invention filed within twelve months in another Paris Convention Contracting State. This right may be claimed by the person who has filed an application or their successor in title. If priority is not validly claimed, patent applications and patents relying on the right may be rejected, revoked or invalidated. National and regional rules governing who may claim priority, whether a priority right may be divided or shared, whether it may be transferred independently of the priority application and the rights to the invention, and the requirements for a valid transfer differ from country to country. The issue of whether priority has been validly claimed may therefore depend on which country's law applies, which depends on the characterisation of the issues. The aim of this article is to provide a European perspective on the law applicable to the right of priority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keyword search is the most ordinary tool in patent offices; however, for more advanced research, free software is not presented on their websites. Thus, this paper has the purpose to provide a data-mining framework for patent documents, linking the natural language processing techniques and data analysis algorithms. The system has two main goals: the analysis of technological prospection and the evaluation of similarities among patents through titles and abstracts. For numerical experiments, we used the base of the US Patent and Trademark Office, with over a million documents. Analysing patents about TFT-LCD, Flash Memory and PDA, from 2010 to 2018, with S-Curve it was observed that the last two technologies decline. Using a cloud of words, it was possible to see the phone's evolution, from 2010 to 2015. To evaluate the degree of similarity among patents, we investigated Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), Word2vec, Word Mover's Distance (WMD), in three different study cases. In addition, these methods were compared with the classical Jaccard index. Numerical results show that LSA and WMD obtained similar patent indications, and the Jaccard index presented different indications from the other three. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Core patents are the most important in a specific technological field. Forecasting core patents is crucial to understanding the development of technology trends. Traditional approaches are based on structured/unstructured features or patent relationships. However, most previous methods focused on specific aspects of patents. We propose a novel framework based on the potential relationships to forecast core patents. An event study approach is applied to analyze the short-term impact of core patents' granting events on the stock market. We apply three methods to build framework: a baseline model using traditional features and two graph embeddings. Finally, a classification model is used to predict and compare the effectiveness of different inputs: the traditional patent feature index, and the feature vectors output by the Node2vec and GraphSAGE models. We verify the method with data from the communications and biomedical industries and investigate its application to the stock market. Results demonstrate that the graph-embedding features based on the network are superior to traditional patent features. The graph neural network effectively fuses the two sets of information, and forecasting is improved in all models. And we find that the cumulative abnormal returns from core patents' granting events outweigh those for non-core (ordinary) patents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open green innovation is essential to accelerate decarbonization in Africa. The dearth of empirical evidence on the current trajectory of green innovation in Africa often hinders appropriate green innovation policy design. This study investigates the incidence of collaboration in inventive activities within Africa using the 'designation of the inventor' in the online European Patent database. We identify and assess open and closed climate adaptation and mitigation inventions using explorative and network analysis techniques. Our research shows that even though climate change adaptation technologies are more valuable, climate change mitigation technologies are more responsive to open innovation. We also discovered that the number of green inventions is slightly increasing, but there are very few collaborative open green inventions in Africa as many of the inventions are closed. These results accentuate the fragmented national innovation systems in many African countries. The lack of collaboration and the disconnect between universities and firms shows that most African knowledge institutions have not evolved into vibrant sources of firm learning for national economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes an updated renewal model to estimate active patent value and technical depreciation in five major Indian technology fields. According to a study of 27,000 patents issued by the Indian Patent Office between 1998 and 2018, Indian patents have a lower value than foreign patents. This suggests that India's patenting and R&D qualities differ from those of more advanced countries. Technology-specific factors are important because technology fields depreciate at different rates. The top 5% of patents accounted for most international and domestic patent values. A genetic algorithm is used to optimise the renewal model accuracy. This study has significant implications for Indian policymakers, patent holders, international investors, and technology market participants. This model allows startups and new businesses who want to value their IP at the very early stage to negotiate with their counterpart when licensing or selling the patents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The patent transfer (PT) has been an essential means of technological catch-up and control for countries and regions. The development and diffusion of PT is influenced by space and network. Analyzing China’s patent transfer network (PTN) from 2001 to 2020 through spatial and complex network analysis, we found that the PTN became denser with significant Matthew effect, hierarchical and small-world properties. Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen remained as national hubs, while new hubs like Suzhou, Guangzhou, Foshan, and Hangzhou, acting as intermediates, emerged. Network communities become more homogenised and geographically clustered due to the resonance effect. There was a shift from disperse hubs to spatial agglomerations, with the construction of long-distance shortcuts breaking spatial constraints on intercity patent transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological development and environmental patents have become one of the policy options to solve the problem of global warming. With the development of technology, waste recycling can be faster and more environmentally friendly, which can contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gasses. The question of which patents and technologies should be promoted for waste management is an important decision-making and research topic. Given the increasing importance of ecological patents and waste disposal for environmental sustainability, this study examines the impact of technological progress on reducing waste-related greenhouse gas (WGHG) emissions in BRIC countries. The study considers energy generation and transmission-related patents (EPAT), patents to prevent pollution in the production process of goods (GPAT), and waste management-related patents (WPAT) as technological progress indicators. Methodologically, the study the applies novel quantile-on-quantile regression (QQ), Granger causality-in-quantiles (GQ), and quantile regression (QR) for the period from 1997m5 to 2019m12. The findings demonstrate that at higher quantiles, (i) EPAT have a dampening effect on WGHG in Brazil and India; (ii) GPAT have a diminishing effect on WGHG in Brazil, Russia, and India; (iii) WPAT have a diminishing effect on WGHG in Brazil, Russia, and India. Overall, technological progress contributes to WGHG emissions reduction in Brazil and India, while EPAT is not beneficial for Russia, and China cannot benefit from patents. The results suggest that Brazil, Russia and India should financially support and disseminate distinct patents to reduce WGHG emissions and improve waste management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific papers and patents are reliable sources of knowledge carriers for measuring science and technology advances, predicting technological trends, and formulating technology strategies. Although the idea of entirely using the two knowledge carriers is rapidly emerging in academic discussion, a theoretical framing of the comparisons is still not present in literature. This study conducts bibliometrics on 2986 patent families and 4755 scientific papers related to silicon carbide metal–oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (SiC-MOSFET) to identify its technological trends and compare the similarities and differences in knowledge generation and diffusion in science and technology. Our methodological framework consists of a combination of geographic distribution (identifying the research developments and distribution), cooperation networks (analyzing organisation collaboration and individual research cooperation), noun phrase co-occurrence clusters (discovering hot research topics), and the global main path analyses of citation networks (tracking the trajectory of knowledge flows). Ultimately, our results contribute to recent bibliometric paradigms beyond discovering the role of scientific papers and patents in promoting science and technology integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the intangible assets related to the circular economy, defined as 'circular patents', that are classified and measured to be bundled into the innovation capabilities of a firm. The impact of a business's capabilities on its level of circular patent activism is empirically analysed in this study in a theoretical framework of dynamic capabilities. To this end, a model of the cause-and-effect relationship between the circular patents held by firms and their capabilities is designed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and is tested using a sample of 120,406 patents in 2216 Spanish companies. In this analysis, patents that can foster the sharing economy and the circular economy in sensu latu are also considered circular patents, in addition to waste patents and other green patents, offering an enhanced measurement of the intangible assets related to the circular economy. Based on these results, this study provides new insight of how accounting can enable or constrain the transition to a circular economy business model through the measurement and valuation of related intangible assets and the specific business' capabilities in an environmental management framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transportation infrastructure plays a significant role in exacerbating climate change as it contributes to a substantial increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The sole economic sector in which European countries have not succeeded in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG)emissions is the transportation industry. Therefore, reducing transport-related emissions is a primary focus of emphasis in the European Union's efforts to meet its climate targets. Accordingly, this study analyzes the impact of renewable energy use, patent development, and energy taxes in the transport sector on the three different modes of transport-related emissions (aviation, road, and rail) in the 10 highest-income countries of the European Union over the period 2008–2020. The study uses the novel half-panel jackknife estimator for this analysis. The results of the estimation show that patents contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions in aviation and rail transportation, while renewable energies are only effective in rail transportation. In the context of road transportation, energy taxes are effective in mitigating CO2 emissions. Based on these findings, it is recommended that European Union policymakers promote the use of electric vehicles and eco- friendly means of transportation in road transport through energy taxes, increase the use of renewable energy sources such as biodiesel in rail transport, and reduce CO2 emissions by supporting patents that promote green innovations in the aviation sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this work is to develop a model for evaluating the efficiency of the Circular Economy (CE) in Europe. In this context, we have developed a dynamic efficiency model of the CE, the Dynamic Network Data Envelopment Analysis (DNDEA) model (Tone and Tsutsui 2014), with the purpose of it being utilized to determine the degree of progress of the policies on the CE, the degree of compliance with those policies, as well as to determine the factors that are associated with a greater or lesser efficiency. The results obtained indicate that the factors which have most affected the dynamic inefficiency have been: the Imports from the EU countries, the Exports to the non-EU countries, and the Gross Value Added. The patents that are related to Waste Management, Recycling, and Persons Employed in the CE sector have been the factors that have added the greatest efficiency. The contribution of this work lies in the development of a new model for the measurement of the dynamic efficiency of the CE at the macroeconomic level in Europe, while considering the relationships between the results and the resources that are allocated to the CE, and establishing a period of implementation and execution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enterprises often acquire technologies from external sources which are geographically dispersed. Although previous literatures have discussed the role of external technology acquisition (ETA) in enterprises' innovation performance, how innovation is affected by the breadth and depth of ETA is less investigated, and little is known about how geographical distance (GD) is involved. Therefore, this paper first analyses the relationship between the breadth, depth of ETA and enterprises' innovation performance with patent transaction data of listed manufacturing enterprises in China. Then we further investigate how GD moderates the relationship. Results show that both the breadth and depth of ETA positively affect enterprises' innovation performance. GD has no moderating effect on the relationship between the breadth of ETA and enterprises' innovation performance, but negatively moderates the relationship between the depth of ETA and enterprises' innovation performance. Our results have implications for enterprises' ETA strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article empirically examines how relative exploration affects high-tech companies' initial public offering (IPO) performance. Analysis of data from 225 high-tech companies listed in the SSE Sci-Tech innovation board (SSE STAR) market shows that high-tech companies with high exploratory innovation tend to generate inferior IPO performance compared to those with high exploitative innovation. Further, we explore the moderating effects of political ties and university cooperation from the triple helix perspective. Results suggest that political ties and university cooperation can alleviate the negative relationship between relative exploration and IPO performance. These findings contribute to the literature on how exploration-exploitation affects external financing by integrating exploration-exploitation and triple helix interactions research. These offer important practical implications for high-tech companies in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionMethodsResultsConclusionsAcute dacryocystitis is an acute infection and the lacrimal sac secondary to pathogenic microorganism growth within the stagnant fluid in the lacrimal sac secondary to nasolacrimal duct obstruction.A literature review was conducted on the PubMed database using the following search terms “dacryocystic retention” and “dacryocystitis” or “dacryolith” or “lacrimal duct” or “pseudo-dacryocystitis”.The literature review suggests that dacryocystitis in a patent nasolacrimal drainage system can stem from diverse causes including the mechanical impaction by dacryoliths, viral infections and anatomical variations. It is believed that these causes lead to transient obstruction to the nasolacrimal excretory system predisposing to secondary infections. Idiopathic temporary dacryocystic retention is also highlighted in this review.This review broadens the understanding of dacryocystic retention and highlights the need for careful diagnosis and tailored treatment plans, particularly in cases deviating from the traditional etiological pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Metaverse’ is set to be the disruptive technology which is about to bring an overhaul in the functioning of myriad sectors ranging from education, entertainment, health care, businesses amongst others. The key feature of this technology is the immersion of physical world into a virtual world. Metaverse in a way finds its roots on the technologies of Virtual/ Augmented Reality (VR/AR) which essentially are about simulating real world and augmenting the real – world experience in the digital world. Intellectual Property Rights which exist for protection of intangible assets, hence are vital in perspective of Metaverse. This research analyses the IP form of Patents in reference to Metaverse. Patents are an attractive choice due to the commercial advantage and the higher level of protection it offers compared to other IP forms. The trend of surge in patent applications seen with emerging technologies like AI and Blockchain is likely to be reflected with metaverse. The article views the metaverse and patent domain through an overarching lens gauging the possible scope and challenges. The analysis is based on US, EU and Indian patent laws to get a comprehensive picture across the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation, which constitutes an important factor for growth, strongly diversifies regions' level of development. To compare regional innovativeness of EU territories, we employ the data envelopment analysis (DEA) framework. We analyse the relative efficiency of regions using a standard DEA for the country-level, a spatial DEA for regional analysis and the Malmquist indexes to measure the innovation productivity change over time. In our research, the inputs are human capital and R&D expenditure, while the outputs include the number of patents and GDP. We combine the results of these methods with spatial statistics to pinpoint the spatio-temporal patterns of innovation efficiency across European regions. We confirm validity of the assumed complex spatial structure of innovation efficiency. Our study indicates that innovation efficiency at the country-level is dissimilar, or even partially contradictory, to NUTS 2 outcomes due to high regional dispersion within state borers and similarities among neighbouring regions from different countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Structural characteristics' are gambling product design features which contribute to the amount of time or money that gamblers spend using them, such as the short pay-out intervals of electronic gaming machines (EGMs). However, it is important to also understand the structural characteristics of current online sports betting products, and how these products may continue to evolve via a forward-looking analysis of utility patents, given the increasing international popularity of this gambling mode. A scoping review of the emergent structural characteristics associated with online sports betting was conducted upon the literature (2015–2022), and of sports betting utility patents. A total of 26 literature records and 8 utility patents were included. Results indicated that online sports betting is instantly accessible, provides rapid and continuous betting opportunities, and offers user-interactivity via features such as 'cash-out' and the ability to instantly deposit funds. Additionally, the online sports betting market has expanded into adjacent industries such as esports. The included utility patents suggest that online sports betting may evolve by incorporating peer-to-peer competitive elements, augmented reality, and highly specific statistics/notifications. Overall, the online environment has transformed sports betting into a faster and more harmful gambling mode that provides a diverse range of features and betting opportunities. It is important that this area of research develops in order to encourage appropriate policy and the more ethical redesign of online sports betting products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes to scrutinise the evolution of technological diversification of organisations whose activities are mainly nanotechnologies. We resort to the InnoVue search platform to gather patent information related to the world's largest intellectual property organisations. We apply a five-step analysis on a panel dataset of 16042 distinct patents published between 1985 and 2020 and recorded on June 29, 2021. Text mining has been employed to explore key topics with high-level technological activeness, while a trend analysis has been applied to study diversification characteristics and evolution patterns. Moreover, we initiate spatial autocorrelation modelling to detect spatiotemporal patterns of technical innovation in nanotechnology. Results show that nanobiotechnology and nanophotonics have become new technical hotspots over the last decade. Furthermore, spatial analysis returns a significant clustered pattern among nanotechnology patent distributions and shows that nanotechnology activities were mainly concentrated in Asian countries during the period under study. Our research has policy implications and may interest decision-makers and academics looking to explore nanotechnology's evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For assessing the overall impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is crucial to continuously monitor large corporations. This paper delves into the examination of 42 corporations that rank among the world's largest investors in R&D, accounting for over one-third of AI patents globally. The focus is on their post-patenting performance, specifically in terms of employment changes, and comparing it with the outcomes of 42 similar companies operating in the same sectors. The latter also recorded substantial levels of R&D expenditures but were not significantly involved in AI patenting. The key findings reveal that, in the medium – and high-tech manufacturing sectors, companies with the highest proportions of AI patents incurred in employment reductions. Conversely, IT services companies experienced substantial employment growth. Along with tentative explanations of these findings, advantages, limitations, and possible developments of this type of analysis are illustrated in the concluding section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The citrus essential oil isolation has vast potential to valorize waste from the agro-industrial and food sectors. The objective of this work was to develop a review of patents on essential oil isolation systems from any plant and citrus essential oil isolation systems and/or methods. The technological search was carried out in the patent databases of Espacenet, Patentscope, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Google Patents, LENS ORG, and USPTO from 2000 to 2021. The results highlight that most of the inventions are from China and consist of isolation methods for citrus essential oil. The USA´s inventions stand out as systems that can be produced on a larger scale. The patent shares of the educational and private sectors are 26% and 74%, respectively. About 10.53% of patents protect commercially exploited products. Finally, an opportunity was detected to protect methods and/or systems that integrate renewable energy technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological upgradation is the driving force of social and economic development. Although technological upgradation is extensively needed, it is characterised as high intelligence, high investment, and high risk. In the face of complex market competition patterns, industrial enterprises urgently need to seek external cooperation and achieve sustainable competitive advantage. However, the current digital systems of patents fail to fulfil efficiency improvement from technology transfer to research and development (R&D) cooperation for industrial enterprise. Nor does it provide adequate support for industrial enterprises' technological upgradation. Therefore, this research proposes a systematic framework that combines nautral language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) technologies, including the patent recommendation model, patent transferability evaluation model, and research team detection model. Such a digital system of patents improves the efficiency of technology transactions and R&D cooperation with research institutions for industrial enterprises to identify related authorised patents and locate technology research teams. It is also expected that the developed system will enable research institutions to recommend valuable patents and transfer innovative technologies effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firm's inter-regional investments are crucial carriers of capital flows between cities, transforming information resources into innovation capabilities. Based on the listed companies' inter-regional investments data and patent data in China during 2009-2018, the mechanism of the inter-regional investments in technological catch-up and the heterogeneity in different samples have been investigated via the two-stage least squares regression. The results show that: (a) Inter-regional investments enhance the innovation capability, narrow the technological distance, and play a more significant role than foreign capital; (b) Technological catch-up is achieved through independent innovation, the transmission mechanism of imitative innovation does not hold; (c) When there is no market segmentation, the role of inter-regional investments on technological catch-up is realised entirely through independent innovation. Segmentation hinders the technological catch-up process; (d) The partial mediating effect of the manufacturing industry on technological catch-up holds, while in non-manufacturing industries, it is not significant. Inter-regional investments are important for the improvement of local innovation capacity and for China's catching up with the world's technological frontiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South African bioeconomy strategy did not clearly articulate the measurement framework to monitor the implementation of the strategy. This paper provides an analysis of bioeconomy patents, the most prolific organizations and citations at the EPO and USPTO for South Africa, BRICS, Egypt and Nigeria during the Ten-Year Innovation Plan 2008–2018. The terms 'biotechnology', 'medical technology', 'pharmaceuticals' and 'selected environment-related technologies' were used to search for patents. The OECD patents by technology, the EPO PATSTAT and the USPTO PatFT databases were used to map patents and citations. The results show that South Africa ranked last in the BRICS group but produced a higher number of patents than Egypt and Nigeria. The number of patents generally decreased for the selected countries except for China. The total citations for the selected countries was generally inconsistent. The important innovators for South Africa in the bioeconomy are mainly universities and public research institutions. A new fiscal approach to encourage knowledge application in bioeconomy in South Africa is required. Incentives from government that encourage collaboration between research institutions and industry to direct research with industry application are required. The study contributes to the development of metrics to monitor the bioeconomy in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an exceptional rise in the number of industries in recent times, resulting in a leap in pollution caused, in addition to a large amount of waste being generated. Industrial pollution affects the entire ecosystem, predominantly the air, water, and soil. Remediation of air, water, and soil from industrial pollutants thus becomes a matter of concern due to detrimental effects. Remediation of the wastes generated by the industries has been carried out by several substances. The present research paper discusses with the use of soil microbial consortia for industrial waste bioremediation. Over the past decades studies have being emphasised on the use of microbial consortia rather than the use of individual strains, with increasing consideration given to environmental sustainability, with the aid of interdisciplinary approaches. An in-depth study has been carried out on the different microbes, used for remediation with special focus on soil microbial consortia. The manuscript also describes at length the benefits of the use of these microbes, different contaminants and wastes for which these have been tested, different kinds of microbial consortia explored, and the limitations and advantages associated with the use of these. The present work helps in understanding the use of microbial consortia as an efficient and promising biomaterial with an edge over other materials for industrial waste remediation. A brief study of the patents in the area of the use of soil microbial consortia has also been carried out in the present work. An analysis of the distribution of patents country-wise, technology main areas, patent publication trend, and top patent applicants and inventors has also been carried to give an idea of the patents pertaining to the application of soil microbial consortia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 2011 onwards, thanks to the Industry 4.0 concept referring to the fourth industrial revolution, different technologies have emerged with the main objective of achieving increased productivity. One of the main technologies related to Industry 4.0 is collaborative robots, also known as cobots, whose main feature is an intelligent real-time labor nexus between humans and robots respecting safety standards. Therefore, the aim of this research work is to identify, analyze and map the technological profile of collaborative robots through patents. The results obtained show that the number of patents in recent years has grown exponentially since 2016. The largest number of inventions are concentrated in China, led by different universities, research centers and companies. Other important countries, in terms of development, are Japan and Germany, however, the inventions are mainly led by one company, Fanuc Corporation and Kuka Roboter GmbH. Likewise, it is clear that the technological advances are mainly directed toward technological developments linked to manipulators and hand tools, specifically to safety accessories and program-controlled manipulators. The results of the research provide the community involved in the research and development of collaborative robotics with a solid conceptual review, as well as a current snapshot of the temporal evolution and specialization in the technological field of inventions, obtaining intelligence information about Collaborative Robot technology to support R&D strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent is military technology innovation emergent? This study answers this question by applying an emergence detection algorithm to roughly 300,000 technical terms extracted from military technology patents granted from 1980 to 2019. Emergence – instances of sudden and rapid growth of a technical term within the military patent corpus – is found to vary greatly over time. Military technology innovation during the period of 1996-2008 is found to be highly emergent. This period was found to be characterized by high organization-type diversity; non-traditional vendors, traditional defense contractors, large civilian-facing firms, and individuals generated military patents containing many novel emergent technical terms. However, in recent years, military technology innovation has exhibited markedly less emergence. The period of low emergence is characterized by reduced contributions by non-traditional vendors, defense prime contractors, and individual inventors to military patents containing emergent terms. These observations suggest that policies attempting to ensure a healthy defense innovation ecosystem should seek organization-type diversity and may benefit from employing promotion strategies targeted at distinct organization types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Director of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)'s Traditional Knowledge Division, Wend Wendland, shares his expertise in Indigenous Intellectual Property (IP) Rights. He introduces major IP instruments supporting Indigenous rights, and comments on significance of these instruments for the work of libraries and information professionals. He also shares current developments at WIPO that mark a major point in the history of IP policy and reflects on possible impact on these developments on Indigenous communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A five-membered heterocyclic compound known as 1,2,4-oxadiazole has one oxygen, two carbon, and two nitrogen atoms within a ring. Numerous studies have shown that 1,2,4-oxadiazole has the potential as a useful pharmacophore in many harmful pharmacological conditions such as microbiocidal, anti-inflammatory, anti-tuberculosis, Meibomian gland dysfunction, etc. In this present review, we highlighted the synthetic protocols (based on the starting substrate) for 1,2,4-oxadiazoles which have been adopted in the last nine years (2015 to 2023). The study also involved a listing of several patents (granted) which comprised important work on 1,2,4-oxadiazole and its derivatives. Among all the methods, the most commonly adopted synthetic methods included the synthesis of 1,2,4-oxadiazoles from amidoxime, nitriles, chloroximes, benzaldehyde, vinyl benzene, benzamides, etc. These synthetic protocols have also been compared based on different reaction conditions, feasibility, and economy to help the researchers in designing their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Osteoarthritis is considered a degenerative joint disease that is characterised by inflammation, chronic pain, and functional limitation. The increasing development of nanotechnology in drug delivery systems has provided new ideas and methods for osteoarthritis therapy. This review aimed to evaluate patents that have developed innovations, therapeutic strategies, and alternatives using nanotechnology in osteoarthritis treatment. The results show patents deposited from 2015 to November 2021 in the online databases European Patent Office and World Intellectual Property Organisation. A total of 651 patents were identified for preliminary assessment and 16 were selected for full reading and discussion. The evaluated patents are focused on the intraarticular route, oral route, and topical route for osteoarthritis treatment. The intraarticular route presented a higher patent number, followed by the oral and topical routes, respectively. The development of new technologies allows us to envision a promising and positive future in osteoarthritis treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unaipon descendant, Kym Kropinyeri, had promised to Unaipon and other Ngarrindjeri elders that he would pass on their history, including accounts of what happened to them at Point McLeay mission. This article addresses the Unaipon inventions. We provide a comprehensive account of Unaipon's patent applications and the Protection-era restrictions that impacted Aboriginal inventors. The fate of Unaipon's much celebrated 1909 shearing patent is fully explored. Exploitation of this invention is contextualised with reference to the patent activities of one of the most successful twentieth-century agricultural conglomerates that sold shearing handpieces, Cooper Engineering Ltd (Aust). Unaipon's claim he was ripped off is considered in light of the demands made on him by the Chief Protector, politicians, religious groups, museum staff, and harassment by mission superintendents and police. All these factors impacted the capacity of Unaipon to pursue his scientific interests and delivered him into poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of "knocking off" the work of others has been an integral practice of the United States ready-to-wear industry since the 1890s. In the 1930s, the Fashion Originators Guild of America (FOGA) created an internal system to protect its members' design work, but in 1941 this system was declared in restraint of trade, and the next best protection option laid in the US design patent system. This research examines the 4,523 dress patents issued in the United States between 1936 and 1942, focusing on the designers and/or manufacturers represented and the process and timing of patent applications. Analysis of select court cases of design patent infringement, including a case study of a patent for "The Perfect Dress" by leading FOGA member and ready-to-wear dress manufacturer Samuel Zahn, demonstrates the difficulty of protecting a patented dress design and the complicated nature of what constituted an original design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology opportunity analysis (TOA) is of great help to technology innovation and R&D strategy of enterprises. Most previous studies of TOA only focused on scientific research or technology development phases, seldom linking technology opportunities to business applications. Using both patent and trademark data, we focused on the linkage of technology and business areas and discovered technology opportunities based on firms' existing technology base. First, we extracted common product keywords from two data sources to construct document-keyword matrices. Then, we matched patents and trademarks with common keywords to build the relevancy network between technology and the business areas. Finally, we discovered technology opportunities from potential undeveloped business areas, taking into account technology-business relevancy and firms' technology base. We conducted a case study on 3D printing to test our method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional and academic debates have intensified regarding the recent efforts to claim inventorship of AI-related patent applications, as has notably been seen in the known cases of Thaler v Comptroller ('DABUS') that have been examined in various jurisdictions. The pertinent question that has emerged is whether artificial intelligence systems can independently produce patentable subject matter. What has to be looked at, first, is the preliminary question of what the claim of producing inventions 'autonomously' can possibly mean under a technological perspective – an essential stage in the debate that is usually bypassed in legal commentary. Once such a technological explanation has been provided, a legal question can reasonably arise as to whether an AI process, such as software, may make a contribution that rewards a patent. AI inventions are legally approached and analysed as processes and as to their relationship with their direct products. Thus, where a process (AI) 'creates' or 'makes' a product, the focus is reasonably put on if and to what extent disclosing the product can provide a contribution separate to that which has already been provided by the process that created it. It is stressed that the current push for AI-generated products bypasses this key question which is essential in assessing the invention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is an open question of whether patent thickets coincide or differ across jurisdictions. Taking Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) technology as an example, this paper applies the social network analysis method to study the diversity and coincidence of patent thickets. The evolution of patent thicket density in the USA has a similar pattern with Europe and Japan, but it differs from China, Germany and South Korea. This paper uses the degree centrality, which is the number of one node directly connecting to the other nodes in a given network, to explore the patent thicket structure. We find critical multinational companies with higher degree centrality coincides across patent thickets, while most patentees with lower degree centrality do not co-occur in other patent thickets. The diversity of patent thickets implies companies should implement differential patent strategies in various markets. In contrast, the coincidence means patent holders who co-occurred in different patent thickets could be potential patent licensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultured meat (CM) has emerged as a breakthrough technology, which has the potential to minimise future negative impacts associated with the rapidly growing world population; such as serious environmental, sustainability, global public health, and animal welfare concerns. Recently numerous researchers in academia and companies have been putting significant efforts into scientific and translational development in this field. Since various pillars of CM manufacturing hold substantial translational potential, there has been a steady interest in filing patent applications globally in the past decade. For the first time, we have performed a patentometric analysis for cultured meat by highlighting the current patents landscape, determining prolific organisations and geographical locations active in the area, and identifying the overall outlook for the field. In total, > 190 patents published in the English language were collected from 1997 to 2020 for the analysis. Relevant data were extracted from the patents, including technology focus, country of origin, assignees, priority date, cooperative patent classification (CPC) code, to analyse the current patent landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This patent review encapsulates information that could be used as a reference by researchers in the fields of coatings and interfaces, biofabrication, tissue engineering, biomaterials, and biomedical engineering, as well as those especially interested in the formulation of hydrogel coatings. The state has been reviewed by introducing what has been innovated, invented, and patented in relation to hydrogel coatings. A detailed analysis of the patentability of hydrogel applications, such as the coating of medical devices to enhance their clinical performance, has been provided. During a search, 2937 patent documents were found. 2012 was the year with the most patent documents (177). Based on the patent classification, all patent documents and most inventions are intended for biomaterials for coating prostheses characterized by their function or physical properties, such as macromolecular materials, hydrogels, and biologically active materials. Additionally, research based on medicinal formulations with unique physical forms is concentrated in the majority of patents, according to knowledge clusters and expert driving factors. Finally, to demonstrate the innovation trends in hydrogel-based coatings, a selection of relevant patent applications and granted patents is proposed at the end of this paper, along with some examples of commercial products based on the patented technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how regions develop new innovation specializations, covering different activities in the whole process from technological invention to commercialization. We develop a conceptual framework anchored in two building blocks: first, the conceptualization of innovation as a process spanning technology, design, and market activities; second, the application and extension of the principle of relatedness to understand developments within and between the different innovation activities. We offer an empirical investigation where we operationalize the different innovation activities using three intellectual property rights: patents, industrial designs, and trademarks. We provide two separate analyses of how relatedness and cross-relatedness matter for the emergence of new specializations: for 259 NUTS-2 European regions and for 363 metropolitan statistical areas of the US. While relatedness is significantly associated with new regional specializations for all three innovation activities, cross-relatedness between activities also plays a significant role. Our study has important policy implications for developing and monitoring smart specialization regional strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an examination of how investors in the corporate bond market in emerging economies react to patents. To empirically explore this question, we constructed a sample of 1862 Chinese corporate bonds issued between 2004 and 2020 and gathered data on Chinese domestic patents, reverse innovation patents, and the validity of patents. The empirical results suggest that domestic patents are the primary source of information for bond investors in China when evaluating corporate innovation and that investors can successfully discern between patents that are valid and those that are not. At the same time, the positive relationship between corporate innovation and bond prices is found to be negatively moderated by credit ratings and state ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patents in information and communication technologies (ICTs) are important instruments for protecting companies' inventions and to appropriate the value of the related inventions. However, the increasing dynamics and complexity in ICTs are challenging the effectiveness of patents. Based on a review of the literature and interviews with relevant stakeholders in Europe, we have identified the most relevant challenges for patents in ICT and possible solutions. These insights have been used as input in framing our broad survey among European stakeholders. The results reveal on the one hand the differences between the patent owners and stakeholders owning no patents, in particular with regards to the various challenges the patent system is facing. On the other hand, the differences disappear in the assessment of the effectiveness of the various solutions. Finally, we conclude with a summary of our main findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The automotive industry faces the challenge of digital transformation at present, especially the autonomous vehicle. To explore the innovation links between different regional innovation systems, this study proposed a theoretical framework combining actor network, regional innovation and open innovation systems. Through the social network analysis and non-parametric test of patent data, the research findings show many significant differences between Europe and China. Finally, some suggestions are provided for strategy planning and policy implementation of open innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological advances in tea production are critical to meet global demands for tea consumption. To illuminate differences in the scientific and commercial relevance of research programs between major tea-related research organizations around the world, we conducted a bibliometric analysis comparing the scientific outputs, including peer-reviewed publications and patents, of six major research organizations published between January 01, 2008 and July 11, 2020. For this competitive ranking analysis, we examined a number of papers, research topics, academic influence, capacity for development, capacity for collaboration, and capacity for technological innovation. Among the six research organizations, Anhui Agricultural University (in China) had the most publications, while the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Tea Research Institute showed a higher capacity for development. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (in India) and the University of Shizuoka (Japan) both showed high academic influence, while the University of Shizuoka, Tea Research Association Tocklai and National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (Japan) showed a high capacity for collaboration. The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Tea Research Institute applied for the most patents, while the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research applied for the most international patents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patents are often studied as signals that convey invaluable insights into a firm's inventive capabilities, aiding in the reduction of knowledge asymmetries between the firm and external investors. Yet, most researchers examine patents as providing a single positive signal. We argue patents provide multiple and possibly countervailing signals; some characteristics may increase perceived knowledge asymmetries, while others decrease perceived knowledge asymmetries. We provide evidence patent characteristics provide multiple signals, impacting investors' perceived knowledge asymmetries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Martin Fredriksson's article focuses on India's Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) towards the protection of traditional knowledge (TK). Fredriksson has also connected the genesis and context of TKDL to various irrelevant aspects that include religion and politics. Fredriksson's narration and inferences on TKDL are also drawn from a selection of referenced literature, with some of the cited text being subjective in nature. We object to certain contentious statements and inferences about TKDL and India made therein. We welcome the invitation from Third World Quarterly to provide our response to the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to analyse how human resources for Industry-University collaboration achieves technology transfer and start-up development through three collaboration outputs (funding from Industry, research paper publication, patent applications, and registrations). The results of this empirical study showed that human resources for Industry-University linkage had a significant positive effect on funding from Industry, research paper publication, patent development, technology transfer and start-up development. Furthermore, funding from industry had a positive effect on research paper and patent applications and registrations. Additionally, patents had a positive effect on technology transfer and start-up creation development, while research paper development had a positive effect on technology transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]