Use Patent Portfolio Analysis to Assess Technological Ability of Solar Cell Vendors

• Main Authors: To-Wei Chen, 陳拓維
• Other Authors: Ming-Yeu Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/88209008706614445004

碩士 === 真理大學 === 管理科學研究所 === 94 === Patent documents not only provide the technological information, but also reflect the technological development and trend. Companies can discover the technological capabilities of competitors after analyzing patent documents. The patent portfolio analysis methods presented by Brockhoff (1992) and Ernst (1998) were widely adopted. Ernst (1998) analyzed patent portfolios according to two levels: company level and technology level. This study bases on the methods presented by Ernst (1998) to analyze patent portfolios, and puts forward different analytical methods on the different levels separately. On the company level, this study uses four patent indicators namely number of patents, percent of company patents in area, cites per patent and science linkage instead of five indicators proposed in the previous methods to evaluate the patent activities and quality of companies and then to understand patenting strategies of them. Furthermore, this study employs factor analysis and cluster analysis to divide technological capabilities of companies. On the technology level, this study introduces an emerging method, called text mining, to clarify the technological fields and thus to solve the problems caused by manual judgment. After identification, patent portfolio figures which comprise of relative patent position, technology attractiveness and technology importance are drawn. As the increasing importance of solar cell technology, this study employs patents of solar cell technology as an example to perform the modified patent portfolio analysis. The patent performance, R&D focuses and technological ability of important solar cell vendors are discussed by this study.