Inter-organisational patent opposition network: how companies form adversarial relationships
- PDF / 1,513,977 Bytes
- 22 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 34 Downloads / 174 Views
Economics and Complex Networks
Inter‑organisational patent opposition network: how companies form adversarial relationships Tomomi Kito1 · Nagi Moriya2 · Junichi Yamanoi3 Received: 30 June 2020 / Revised: 4 September 2020 / Accepted: 7 October 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Much of the research on networks using patent data focuses on citations and the collaboration networks of inventors, hence regarding patents as a positive sign of invention. However, patenting is, most importantly, a strategic action used by companies to compete with each other. This study sheds light on inter-organisational adversarial relationships in patenting for the first time. We constructed and analysed the network of companies connected via patent opposition relationships that occurred between 1980 and 2018. A majority of the companies are directly or indirectly connected to each other and hence form the largest connected component. We found that, in the network, many companies disapprove patents in various industrial sectors as well as those owned by foreign companies. The network exhibits heavy-tailed, power-lawlike degree distribution, and assortative mixing. We further investigated the dynamics of the formation of this network by conducting a temporal network motif analysis, with patent co-ownership among the companies being considered. By regarding opposition as a negative relationship and patent co-ownership as a positive relationship, we analysed where collaboration may occur in the opposition network and how such positive relationships would interact with negative relationships. The results identified the structurally imbalanced triadic motifs and the temporal patterns of the occurrence of triads formed by a mixture of positive and negative relationships. Our findings suggest that the mechanisms of the emergence of the inter-organisational adversarial relationships may differ from those of other types of negative relationships, hence necessitating further research. Keywords Patent oppositions · Adversarial relationships · Negative relationships · Inter-organisational networks · Network analysis · Motif analysis
* Tomomi Kito [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
The Japanese Economic Review
1 Introduction Innovation is one of the key issues in the recent economic paradigm and has consequently attracted a growing number of academic studies over time. Enhanced by recent computational advances, patent statistics derived from large-scale patent databases have been extensively used to help gain insight into innovation processes, drivers, and appropriate measures for innovation values (Kogan et al. 2017; Youn et al. 2015; Hasan and Tucci 2010). Network science has significantly contributed to patent data science. Considerable effort has been devoted to analysing networks of patents connected by citations, with the intent to understand technological change and impact (Érdi et al. 2013; Verspagen 2007). The consensus here is that the patent citation netw
Data Loading...
