Abstract
The United States (US) and the People’s Republic of China (China) have the most patents in nanotechnology in their own depositories and overall in the international depositories. This paper compares nanotechnology landscapes between 2001 and 2017 as reflected in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA). It presents the evolution of nanotechnology patent development in the US and China, the differences between nanotechnology topics addressed in the USPTO and CNIPA patents, key players in nanotechnology fields in both domestic and foreign markets, and the player collaboration patterns. Bibliographic, content, and social network analyses are used. The longitudinal changes of granted patents and ranked countries, patent families, technology fields, and key players in domestic and overseas markets are outlined. Collaboration networks of assignees and the influential players have been identified based on network parameters. Results show that the US market attracts more international collaborations and has a higher level of knowledge exchange and resource sharing than the Chinese market. Companies play a vital role with regard to US nanotechnology development, resulting in more within-industry collaborations. In contrast, universities and research institutes are the dominant contributors to China’s nanotechnology development, leading to more academia-industry collaborations in China’s market.
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Notes
Defined by WIPO International Patent Classification (IPC) and technology concordance (Schmoch 2008).
Available on https://gephi.org/users/download/
The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. Available on https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/paris/
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF EFMA-1832926, the National Social Science Fund of China under Grant No. 15BGL037, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 71673135. The fourth co-author was supported by the Directorate for Engineering in NSF. The authors thank Questel.com for making patent database available for research and Qingmin Ji at Herbert Gleiter Institute of Nanoscience at Nanjing University of Science and Technology for her help in validating nanotechnology topics and keywords. The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the respective supporting agencies.
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Wu, L., Zhu, H., Chen, H. et al. Comparing nanotechnology landscapes in the US and China: a patent analysis perspective. J Nanopart Res 21, 180 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-019-4608-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-019-4608-0