Fang-Pei Su

CO-OPETITION STRATEGY FROM THE PATENT ANALYSIS PERSPECTIVE: THE CASE OF THE STENT MARKET

Information about technological innovation and its evolutionary path can be explored by patent analysis. Therefore, for those firms which are dependant on large investments and a high business performance, such as stent manufacturers, integrating patent information with business strategy is the critical issue. The competition between stent manufactures is intensifying because of increasing global volume demand and improving technological performance. From a resource-based view, adopting a co-opetition strategy is essential for firms to keep sustainable competitive advantage. Over the last decade, patent rights have become a major tool of the co-opetition strategy. This study analyzes patent data from the USPTO during 1984 to 2005 and constructs patent information indicators to verify the process of technology evolution. On these grounds, we can understand the relative technological position and technological strength of the major manufacturers in this industry and also inspect their changes of position and business scope to examine the relationship between each firms technology strategy and business strategy.

A heuristic procedure to identify most valuable chain of patents in a given technology

We argue that patents under litigation have maximum value. We develop a heuristic procedure to determine how patents (associated with a given technology) under litigation form a network of patent family members and priority patents involved. Later we develop a simple algorithm to identify “critical” and “significant” chain in the above network. We argue that these “critical” and “significant” chains (in the above network so created) offer companies valuable information in deciding their patent portfolio strategies.

Research and Development Portfolio for the Payment FinTech Company - The Perspectives of Patent Statistics

The manufacturer of Payment FinTech invests in research and development. They absorb the technical knowledge of the competition collaborator, so as to build a combination with the technical skills. Therefore, identifying the technical advantages among competing companies for the research and development, accumulating the technical core competence, as well as maintaining the competitive advantages are the important business topics for the manufacturer of Payment FinTech. From the viewpoint of patent statistics, this study forms the patent data collection after retrieval and analyzes it by using three patent statistics of technical attraction, technical relative position and relative patent advantages, in order to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the research and development portfolio for the Payment FinTech Company in the industry.

A hybrid clustering approach to identify network positions and roles through social network and multivariate analysis

This study proposes a hybrid clustering approach to identify the positions and roles in a relational network by integrating multivariate and social network analysis. First, an adjacency matrix was constructed based on the graph theory to indicate the relation between the collected data. Next, network analysis was conducted and the statistics of network centrality as clustering variables were computed. After, this study reduced clustering variables using the principal component analysis. These selected principal components were then used as clustering variables for a two-step cluster analysis. Hierarchical cluster analysis was first made to determine the appropriate number of clusters and then K-means clustering was used for dividing actors into k proper positions. In addition, the multivariate analysis of variance was conducted to test the significance between those positions. After, a new adjacency matrix was built upon the rearrangement of k positions. The frequency within and between these positions was computed and the cut-off value was determined to distinguish the difference between these frequencies. Finally, each position was labeled based on its characteristics and the relationships within and between these positions. After the structured approach was established, the litigation-related network of smartphone makers was used as empirical evidence. The results showed that this structured approach can effectively distinguish the position and role of a company in a relational network.

“Expand/offense” and “deepen/defense” strategy of patent acquisition for leader and follower: Evidence from drug-eluting stent

This article tries to explore the strategic intension of patent acquisition for drug-eluting stent manufactures by the approach of patent citation network. From the view of supplementary and complementary, we could understand the change of patent employments and patent portfolios of the leader, Johnson & Johnson/Cordis, and the follower, Boston Scientific/BSS, before/after patent acquisition. Four patent indicators, Technological Knowledge Status, Technological Knowledge Reliability, Common Internal Knowledge, and Common External Knowledge, provide the movement of position and role and change of supplementary and complementary of manufactures. The result shows that the leader acquires patents of complementary technology and the follower acquires patents of supplementary technology. The leader employs “expand/offense” and the follow adopts “deepen/defense” strategy of patent acquisition.

Putting design thinking into the patent deployment practice of dimming LED driver SMEs

This research focuses on the use of design thinking and patent information as the basis for a set of operation processes. These will investigate how enterprises can find new business opportunities based on the demands of the market through patent deployment and technology road-mapping, starting with the establishment of a top management team and an industrial development model to proposing strategic patent deployment patterns. Four aspects of technology road-mapping were then developed to support decisions regarding connecting technologies with the market. The four aspects of the road-mapping include technologies, patents, products, and the market. The research produced six patent deployment models and three feasible patent deployment schemes. The technology road-mapping of the case company was then completed so as to realize the long-term blueprint of connecting technologies with market goals. The results won high praise from the company. This research believes that using SPDT process and patent information at the same time will produce complementary effects, and enhance the objectivity and reliability of the patent deployment. Using just patent information may have limitations because the information only comes from the outside. However, using it together with SPDT can guarantee the extraction of more valuable technological information from internal discussions with the company, and provide patent deployment and technology road-mapping for the company.