DOI: 10.1595/147106708X362735 Platinum Group Metals Patent Analysis and Mapping A REVIEW OF PATENTING TRENDS AND IDENTIFICATION OF EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES By Richard Seymour Johnson Matthey Technology Centre, Blounts Court, Sonning Common, Reading RG4 9NH, U.K.; E-mail: [email protected] The patent literature contains a wealth of detailed information about existing and new uses for the platinum group metals (pgms). While excellent searching tools have existed for many years for identifying patents relating to specific topics, it is only relatively recently that it has been feasible to map the complete archive of patent literature to identify important trends relating to potential new applications. This paper summarises the results of such an exercise for the pgms carried out in early 2008 and shows that one such ‘hot spot’ relates to organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). Previous articles in this Journal have described Matthey Technology Centre is Aureka® (a product the importance of patents as a key source of techni- available from Thomson Reuters) (3), which cal and commercial intelligence (1, 2). The use of includes patent data sets from the Patent patent mapping to visualise large sets of patent data Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and European Patent and to identify trends contained within that data has offices, plus a range of national patent collections also been demonstrated (2). The present paper fur- including those of the U.S.A., Japan, the U.K., ther develops these themes by examining the patent France and Germany. With the exception of Japan, literature on pgms published since 1983, in particu- these collections contain full-text patent docu- lar that on the minor metals iridium and ruthenium. ments, available either as PDF or HTML files. In the case of Japanese patents, a text version of the Searching – What and Where? English-language title, abstract and other front I will begin by thinking about search strategy. In page details is available, together with a PDF file of this case, the initial objective is to create a large set the full specification in Japanese. of patents relating to the pgms, which will later be It must be borne in mind that using the French analysed and refined. The choice of keywords is and German collections would require us to search therefore straightforward: platinum, palladium, in French or German respectively, and of course rhodium, iridium, osmium and ruthenium. In the the results obtained would also be in French or patent literature it is unlikely that the names of German. The patent collections of other countries, these metals would be used in other contexts. for example China and India, are not currently However, this might be a difficult problem if we available in Aureka. However at this stage we are were searching the news or business press, where looking for the big picture. The detail can follow the names of the pgms are associated with many later if necessary, for example by adding Chinese brand names – for example there would probably patent documents retrieved from other patent be many hits on topics such as platinum credit databases. cards or iridium satellite communication systems, We also need to think about where in the and strategies for removing such material would patent document we might wish to search for need to be found. information on pgms. This is an important ques- Perhaps a more important question to ask is tion and to understand the various possibilities which patent collections to use to search for these and their implications we first need to think about words? The software package used at the Johnson the structure of a typical patent: Platinum Metals Rev., 2008, 52, (4), 231–240 231 – Title: often deliberately rather vague and non- opportunities for suppliers of catalysts, the cus- specific. tomer being the owner of the patent. – Abstract: a short summary of the invention, in Table I illustrates the wide variation in the num- perhaps 100 to 200 words. ber of retrieved patents obtained according to – Claims: the claims of a patent govern its legal where in the patent the search is performed. The effect, that is, the areas of technology that are to table clearly shows that choosing which part of the be monopolised. Generally it can be said that a patent document to search is critical. If we search feature is not protected unless that feature is in the patent title, abstract and claims then we claimed or covered by the general language in retrieve over five times as many patents as exactly the claims. So these are key – get the claims the same search restricted to just title and abstract. wrong and your invention may be seriously If we search in the full text of the patent then we compromised. retrieve five times as many again. Then, depending on the particular country, there may also be sections on: Table I – Background: provides details on the context of Searches on the Term ‘Platinum’ Conducted in the invention, current technology, and why the U.S. Granted Patent Collection, for Patents existing solutions may be inadequate. Published between 1st January 2001 and 31st December 2007 – Description: a detailed description of the inven- tion and possible variants thereof. Criteria Number of ‘hits’ – Examples: worked examples, covering aspects such as how the invention is made. Scientists ‘Platinum’ in the patent 1611 sometimes wrongly concentrate on the exam- title or abstract ples just as they would read the experimental ‘Platinum’ in the patent 8878 sections of scientific papers. title, abstract or claims Now let us suppose we are searching for patents ‘Platinum’ in the patent 44,541 in which a new pgm chemical or material is dis- full-text closed, or in which the use of a pgm is a key part of ‘Platinum’ in the patent 35,663 the invention. In this case restricting the search to full-text but not title, terms in the title or abstract, and possibly also the abstract or claims claims, will be adequate. Clearly if the word ‘plat- inum’ appears in any of these sections then it is Table II shows the top fifteen assignees for likely to be a very important part of the invention. each set of results in Table I. It shows that we But what about the case when the name of the might expect to obtain quite different results for pgm appears somewhere in the rest of the patent, the various searches, even though the keyword is but not in the title, abstract or claims? Can these the same in each case. Apart from Micron patents safely be ignored? An example of such Technology Inc, which heads up each list, there are patents might be the use of a standard palladium some very significant differences. Engelhard (now on carbon hydrogenation catalyst in a multi-stage BASF Catalysts) comes in at number five in the organic synthesis route. The novelty is in the end- ‘title or abstract’ search but does not appear in the product, not the catalyst used, and therefore the ‘title, abstract or claims’ or full-text searches. On term ‘palladium’ is unlikely to occur in the title, the other hand, the Semiconductor Energy abstract or claims. However it may well come up in Laboratory, while it does not appear in the ‘title or the examples. While we can probably ignore such abstract’ search, and only reaches number twelve patents for the purpose of identifying key new in the ‘title, abstract or claims’ search, comes in at application areas, important information may number two in the full-text search. nevertheless be obtained from them. For example, Pfizer is another good example. Like they may provide valuable intelligence on sales Semiconductor Energy Laboratory, this company Platinum Metals Rev., 2008, 52, (4) 232 Table II Search Results by Top Fifteen Assignees for Patents in the U.S. Granted Patent Collection, Published between 1st January 2001 and 31st December 2007 Rank ‘Platinum’ in patent title ‘Platinum’ in patent title, abstract ‘Platinum’ in patent full-text or abstract (1611 patents) or claims (8878 patents) but not title, abstract or claims (35,663 patents) 1 Micron Technology Inc Micron Technology Inc Micron Technology Inc 2 General Electric General Electric Semiconductor Energy Laboratory 3 Shin-Etsu Chemical Co IBM Fuji Photo Film Co Ltd 4 UOP LLC Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Eastman Kodak 5 Engelhard Corporation1 Advanced Micro Devices Inc Canon KK 6 Dow Corning Matsushita Electric Industrial Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd Co Ltd 7 Matsushita Electric Industrial Shin-Etsu Chemical Co General Electric Co Ltd 8 Texas Instruments Inc Intel Corp 3M Innovative Properties Co 9 Dow Corning Toray Silicone Infineon Technologies AG IBM 10 IBM Hitachi Ltd NGK Insulators Ltd 11 Advanced Cardiovascular Institut Francais du Petrole Seiko Epson Systems 12 Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Medtronic Inc 13 Honeywell International Inc UOP LLC Pfizer 14 Infineon Technologies AG Texas Instruments Inc Sony Corp 15 BASF Hewlett-Packard Development Co Hitachi Ltd 1Now BASF Catalysts only appears in the top assignees from the full-text patent family members filed in different geograph- search. One would expect Pfizer’s main interest in ical regions, to leave one patent per invention. The platinum to be as a user of catalysts in pharmaceu- final document list contains just over 13,540 tical manufacturing, rather than as a developer of patents. new pgm-based technologies. Manual inspection of Figure 1 shows a basic breakdown of these selected Pfizer patents confirms this to be the case. patents by metal and by five-year timeslices. Overall growth in pgm patents in the period from The Results List and Initial 1983 to 2007 is about 6% per annum.