Clarkson (2005) - Patent Informatics For Patent Thicket Detection

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Reference

• Clarkson, G. (2005), "Patent Informatics For Patent Thicket Detection: A Network Analytic Approach For Measuring The Density Of Patent Space," Academy of Management, Honolulu

@article{clarkson2005patent,
  title={Patent Informatics For Patent Thicket Detection: A Network Analytic Approach For Measuring The Density Of Patent Space},
  author={Clarkson, G.},
  journal={Academy of Management, Honolulu},
  year={2005},
  abstract={When organizations in technology industries attempt to advance their innovative activities, they may encounter patent thickets, or dense webs of overlapping intellectual property rights owned by different companies that must be hacked through in order to commercialize new technology. Throughout the last 150 years, however, organizations have stumbled into a number of patent thickets and have occasionally responded by constructing patent pools or organizational structures where multiple firms collectively aggregate patent rights into a package for licensing, either among themselves or to any potential licensees irrespective of membership in the pool. Such collaboration among technologically competing firms, however, has often encountered difficulty from an antitrust standpoint, even if the formation of the pool is pro-competitive. Despite all that has been written lamenting the problem of patent thickets, the antitrust regime has never had an objective method of verifying the existence of a patent thicket in a given section of patent space. In response to the lack of such a methodology, this paper proposes a tool to facilitate objectively demonstrating the existence of patent thickets. This paper proposes a thicket identification methodology that uses a network analytic technique to determine if a patent pool is coincident with a patent thicket by comparing the density of the patent pool to the density of the surrounding patent space. This paper then applies the new methodology to two existing patent pools and verifies the existence of underlying patent thickets.},
  discipline={Law, Econ},
  research_type={Measures},
  industry={},
  thicket_stance={},
  thicket_stance_extract={},
  thicket_def={},
  thicket_def_extract={},  
  tags={},
  filename={Clarkson (2005) - Patent Informatics For Patent Thicket Detection.pdf}
}

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Abstract

When organizations in technology industries attempt to advance their innovative activities, they may encounter patent thickets, or dense webs of overlapping intellectual property rights owned by different companies that must be hacked through in order to commercialize new technology. Throughout the last 150 years, however, organizations have stumbled into a number of patent thickets and have occasionally responded by constructing patent pools or organizational structures where multiple firms collectively aggregate patent rights into a package for licensing, either among themselves or to any potential licensees irrespective of membership in the pool. Such collaboration among technologically competing firms, however, has often encountered difficulty from an antitrust standpoint, even if the formation of the pool is pro-competitive. Despite all that has been written lamenting the problem of patent thickets, the antitrust regime has never had an objective method of verifying the existence of a patent thicket in a given section of patent space. In response to the lack of such a methodology, this paper proposes a tool to facilitate objectively demonstrating the existence of patent thickets. This paper proposes a thicket identification methodology that uses a network analytic technique to determine if a patent pool is coincident with a patent thicket by comparing the density of the patent pool to the density of the surrounding patent space. This paper then applies the new methodology to two existing patent pools and verifies the existence of underlying patent thickets.