Understanding inter-assignee dynamics of technological development

Interdisciplinarity in technology has been usually investigated by analyzing knowledge flow among different research field or industry. However, very limited researches have comparing the innovation capability and evaluated the influence of knowledge among different knowledge owner. This research aims to first find the inventor position of first assignee types, and second understands knowledge flow among different type of knowledge owners which are patent assignees in patented technologies. A total 4,667,855 patents granted by USPTO between 1976 to 2013 are classified into seven types of assignees, (1) Individual, (2) Company, (3) Government, (4) University, (5) Hospital, (6) Private non-profit, and (7) Other. Subsequently, Knowledge flow among the seven types of assignees is analyzed to understand how each type of assignee influences the others from the five characteristics, i.e. (a) Number of Claim, (b) Number of Patent Citation Received, (c) Number of Patent Reference, (d) Number of Non-Patent Reference, (e) Number of Foreign Reference, that are recognized as important indicators for patent valuation. It is observed that hospital patents play the most significant role in knowledge flow, Number of Patent Citation Received and Number of Non-Patent Reference are more assignee-type sensitive. The inter-assignee dynamics obtained in this study provides a way toward understanding from where technological knowledge is created and how patent assignee moderate the change of patent characteristics.