Analysis of Patent Referencing to IEEE Papers, Conferences, and Standards 2001–2020
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Analysis of US Patent Referencing to IEEE Papers, Conferences, and Standards 2001-2020 Report prepared for: Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers 445 Hoes Lane P.O. Box 1331 Piscataway, NJ 08855-1331, USA Report prepared by: 1790 Analytics LLC 130 Haddon Avenue Haddonfield, NJ 08033 www.1790analytics.com June 9, 2021 Executive Summary Prior studies performed by 1790 Analytics have demonstrated a strong relationship between IEEE research and new patent development and have shown that citations to IEEE can often lead to higher impact patents. Specifically, the impact is measured by examining the extent to which patented inventions build upon papers from IEEE journals, IEEE- sponsored conferences, and IEEE standards. This is an update of previous reports and examines US patents issued from January 1, 2001 through December 31, 2020. The main findings of this report are: • New technology continues to build upon science, and the dependence is increasing. In this study, the top 50 firms (in 2020) were granted 100,818 patents, which made a total of 740,774 non-patent references (an average of 7.35 non-patent references per patent). Back in 2010 the top 30 firms had 58,179 patents which made a total of 239,789 non-patent references (an average of 4.13 non-patent references per patent) Thus, the number of patents is trending upward but the number of references from those patents is rising at a greater rate. Since many of these non-patent references are to scientific articles and conference papers, this suggests that today’s technology developments are increasingly linked to developments in published science. • A large portion of this science base comes from papers presented at IEEE sponsored conferences and published in IEEE journals. The top 50 patenting firms in 2020 have referenced over 1,987,886 articles in the last 20 years. About 29% (588,893) of those articles appeared in IEEE journals, IEEE sponsored conferences or IEEE Standards Documents. • In this study, we also went beyond the top 50 patenting companies and analyzed all patents from the last 20 years in several technology categories of interest to IEEE members and customers. For example, 34.27% of all scientific references from Computer Hardware patents go to IEEE publications. The second most referenced publisher is ACM (Association for Computer Machinery) with 17.62% of the referenced publications. In other Information Technology areas, such as Information Storage, Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Computer Software, the results are similar. • In Telecommunications technology, IEEE is particularly important. The 593,729 references to IEEE articles and conferences represents 42% of all science references from Telecommunications patents since 2001. To help put this in perspective consider: Telecommunications is a very technology driven industry and that technology is often built upon scientific discoveries published in journal and conference papers. If we consider this set of papers as the science base of telecommunications, then 42% of that science base is published in IEEE journals or presented at IEEE sponsored conferences. In addition, the 593,729 references to IEEE dwarf the combined total of the next 20 publishing organizations in this technology. • Although we’ve generated reports like this for more than a decade, we try to add technology categories that are currently hot. In recent years we’ve added Blockchain and Distributed Ledgers, Cybersecurity, and Virtual and Augmented Reality. In emerging areas, IEEE enjoys a two-fold lead over second place ACM. • We also have three other areas that are currently in vogue—Artificial Intelligence (AI), Autonomous Vehicles, and Internet-of-Things related patents—where IEEE is the dominant publisher of the science base. In AI, IEEE enjoys a 3-fold lead over second place ACM. In Autonomous Vehicles, IEEE has a dominant lead (10-fold) over the second-place entry, which is a conference sponsored jointly by IEEE and the Robotics Society of Japan, as well as a 20-fold lead over third place SPIE. And in the Internet-of-Things category IEEE has a 5-fold lead over second place ACM. • IEEE is referenced a surprising amount in areas which are not central to its mission. − For example, 8.72% of the science references from patents in medical devices go to IEEE publications. This ranks IEEE fourth behind RELX and Wiley, and Wolters Kluwer (with 20.03%, 9.74%, and 9.29% respectively). The latter publishers have hundreds of journals in the medical area, whereas IEEE has only a few, so the 8.72% figure is quite solid for a non-core area and fairly close to second place Wiley’s 9.74%. − Optics is also somewhat surprising. IEEE publications receive the most references from Optics patents, and IEEE is referenced even more than the two large Optics Societies that would be expected to lead the area: OSA – The Optical Society of America, and SPIE – The International Society of Optical Engineering. − In Measuring, Testing, and Control, IEEE gets 20.90% of all references, which ranks ahead of the 13.90% of second place RELX while, again, RELX has many more journal titles in the space. − In the Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing category, 45.45% of the patent references are to articles published in IEEE journals or in proceedings of IEEE sponsored conferences. Second place RELX receives about one-sixth as many references in the category. − Patents related to Power Systems and Transmission also reference IEEE publications most frequently. The 54,532 references to IEEE journal and proceedings papers are more than the next two top referenced publishers (RELX and Electrochemical Society) combined. We also examined a specialized subset of the Power Transmission category related to smart meters and smart grids. In this category, 67.15% of the scientific references from patents go to IEEE journal or conference papers. The second most referenced publisher is RELX with only 5.05% of all references. ii − Several years back we started tracking some green energy categories: Solar and Photovoltaic energy and Wind energy. In the latter category IEEE science has a big advantage over the other publishers with more than 43% of the references. In solar energy, IEEE has a smaller lead over RELX. RELX has more than 50 journal titles related to the area including several high impact journals such as Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, Thin Solid Films, Solar Energy, Synthetic Metals, Journal of Crystal Growth, and Solar Cells. IEEE has only a few. − In broadcasting technologies IEEE leads with 37% of the references, which is almost 5 times as many as second place International Telecommunication Union. The latter produces standards documents while the IEEE references are to standards documents as well as peer reviewed scientific papers from journals and conferences. • It has been shown that high-quality, high-impact, and valuable patents tend to be cited more frequently by later patents. Citation impact is thus often used as a quantitative measure for evaluating patents (see [3]). In this study, we found that the patents that reference IEEE papers are cited more often than patents that do not. This was shown to be true for each of the twenty technology categories we examined. This suggests that, not only do IEEE publications frequently provide the science base for new inventions, but that inventions that build upon IEEE publications are more likely to be valuable in the future than inventions that do not build upon IEEE. • Although this study concentrates on patents in specific technology areas, it should be noted that the importance of scientific and technical literature to patented technology is increasing in all areas. Our research shows that the average US patent had only 2.76 non-patent references (NPRs) back in 1997. That number jumped to 11.37 by 2020 – a 312% increase. These numbers are for all issued US patents and not just those in the twenty categories covered in this report.1 This means that in the overall patent system, patented technologies are increasingly referencing scientific articles. • Since we only look at specific categories of technology plus the top 50 firms, there is no way to know exactly how much referencing to IEEE has increased since 1997. However, we can make an estimate for the whole patent system by identifying any Non-Patent References that mention “IEEE” or “I.E.E.E.” (This will of course miss things like the Journal of Lightwave Technology or Spectrum which may not have IEEE in the reference, but it will be a reasonable estimate.) If we do a comparison as above, we find that there were just 14,635 patent references with IEEE or I.E.E.E in 1997, but 149,769 in 2020 (a 923% increase). Thus, science referencing and IEEE referencing have both increased greatly since 1997. 1 Including science intensive areas like Biotechnology, Pharmaceuticals, Chemicals, and other areas where IEEE typically has little influence. iii Table of Contents Section Page I. Introduction 2 II. Methodology 2 III. Results 5 IV. Conclusions 12 V. References 13 VI. Figures 14 Appendix A A-1 Appendix B B-1 Appendix C C-1 I. Introduction In previous studies, it was found that patents reference papers from IEEE journals much more often than papers from other journal publishers. In this report, we update the previous results, and study US patents issued from January 2001 through December 2020. Although this report is an update of previous results, we have made our best efforts to make this report self-contained. The aim of this report, as in previous reports, is to analyze references from patents to journal articles, conferences, and standards documents, in order to assess IEEE’s impact upon technological developments. This report covers twenty subcategories of Technology where IEEE members and readers are active.