半導體合作專利之品質分析

Abstract

現代國家以專利制度為技術競爭訂定完整的遊戲規範。在技術發展以及追趕的過程中，合作研發專利是許多機構採納的一種重要手段。本研究選取當代重要技術產業──半導體──作為關注對象，透過專利引用關係網絡，分析美國專利局1986年至2012年半導體產業之合作專利。研究發現，由於多半為研發水平較低的機構參與，半導體合作專利在整體專利網絡中品質較低。然而若與獨自研發的專利相比，與近期研發水平不亞於自身的機構合作，或研發投入較為有潛力的領域，合作專利的品質均顯著高於自身專利。此外，本研究以合作專利建構機構關係網絡，亦發現合作策略背後隱含著國家政策、企業發展或區域聯盟的關係。

Literatures regarding patent races point out that firms are willing to form research joint ventures to ease the innovation barriers for advancing technological progress. However, the reduced theoretical analytical solution rarely mentions the payoffs to cooperate in the parenting efforts. Therefore, this dissertation innovate by providing the quality measurement of patented technologies by the patent evolution network as well as the standardized hand-collected patent dataset of United States Patent and Trademark office. The result in this thesis shows that cooperated patent report in general lower patent quality across all categories of technologies. However, for those patents in the advancing new fields, cooperative patenting efforts do achieve higher progress. That is to say that smallest innovative firms with few innovative resource can joint with larger mature firms to overcome the scale barriers of key technology invention. Further results also illuminate the insights here by sketching the cross-country innovation network in industrialized economies.