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Breschi, Stefano; Cassi, Lorenzo; Malerba, Franco --- "The Exploration of Knowledge Networks through Patent Citations" [2006] ELECD 373; in Andersen, Birgitte (ed), "Intellectual Property Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Intellectual Property Rights

Editor(s): Andersen, Birgitte

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845422691

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: The Exploration of Knowledge Networks through Patent Citations

Author(s): Breschi, Stefano; Cassi, Lorenzo; Malerba, Franco

Number of pages: 33

Extract:

9. The exploration of knowledge
networks through patent citations
Stefano Breschi, Lorenzo Cassi and
Franco Malerba

ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to discuss the methodological issues arising from
the use of patent citation data as relational data and to provide an example
of empirical analysis. In particular, we propose to use patent citation data to
explore knowledge networks at the level of organizations, that is, companies
and other institutions. We focus our analysis on two different types of
network: citation and co-citation networks. We argue that the former type
of network could map knowledge diffusion networks; the latter could map
the technological space. Using this perspective, this chapter examines the
main structural properties of the knowledge networks in semiconductor
and computer industries. In order to capture the organization's position in
both co-citation and direct patent citation networks, we calculate, for each
sector, two different measures: the crowdedness of a company's position
in the technological space and a measure of its status. These two measures
allow us to map the position of any organization and to define a taxonomy
of four different kinds of organizations: technological leaders, technological
followers, brokers of new technologies and isolated organizations. The
results of our analysis show differences between the semiconductor and
computer sectors and the difference between European and non-European
companies in terms of technological niches.

Keywords: Innovation, Networks of knowledge, Technological positioning,
Network analysis, Patents data


1 INTRODUCTION
Saying that `networks' matter for technological innovation is nowadays
...