The Hindu Business Line : IT in IP and IP in IT

An e-mail alert dated September 11 from the National Bureau of Economic Research (www.nber.org) is unusual. It lists only one working paper among the `latest', instead of the dozen or more that is more the norm.

The solitary paper is titled The `Names Game': Harnessing Inventors' Patent Data for Economic Research, and is authored by Manuel Trajtenberg, Gil Shiff, and Ran Melamed of Tel-Aviv University.

The paper aims to lay out `a methodology and corresponding computer algorithms' to extract the detailed data on inventors contained in patents, and harness it for economic research. "Undoubtedly the richest source of data on worldwide innovation and technical change is patents, with millions of records offering detailed information of what was invented, by whom, in which fields, where, linkages to previous innovations, and so on," write the authors. "The computerisation of the patent file in the early 1980s, the linking to Compustat, and the development of indicators based on patent citations in the 1990s constituted major advances in the ability to master such wealth of information for economic research."

Drawing on the data of US patents between 1963 and 1999, the paper speaks of `a list of 1.6 million unique inventors from all over the world, with detailed data on their patenting histories, their employers, co-inventors, etc'. The findings in the research are that 40 per cent of inventors have more than one patent, and that 70,000 have more than 10 patents! The 75-page paper has more interesting facts in store. Such as, the following:

George Spector ranks first with 715 patents. The grant year of his first patent is 1976.

More than 2,400 inventors have 50-plus patents.

Of the ten `largest' cities, that is, the cities with `the largest number of patents originating in them', the top five are Japanese. Tokyo accounts for 1,35,910 patents. The other four are Yokohama (74,577), Kanagawa (47,695), Kawasaki (40,615) and Osaka (33,360).

Ranks 6 to 10 in the top 10 cities go to: Houston (26,241), San Jose (22,573), Rochester (18,452), and Austin (17,910) - all in the US, and Saitama in Japan (16,768).

New York City, at the 20th place, has 12,840 patents to its account. However, 6,178 patents are assigned to "the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island, which are essentially part of New York City". Los Angeles, which stands at the 39th place has 9,111 patents.

The list of `ten largest assignees' begins with Hitachi, accounting for 70,921 patents. IBM ranks second with 63,311 patents. Canon, General Electric, Bayer, Toshiba, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, BASF and Eastman Kodak are other companies in the hall of fame.

With 1,63,051 records, `drug, bio-affecting and body treating compositions' heads the list of `ten largest patent classes'. Molecular biology and microbiology, radiation imagery chemistry, measuring and testing, internal-combustion engines, active solid-state devices (e.g., transistors, solid-state diodes), semiconductor device manufacturing, and radiant energy are other top classes.

IT in IP

Large-scale use of patent data has thus far faced what is called a `who is who' problem, one learns. "The name of a given inventor may be spelled differently across her/his patents, and the exact same name may correspond to different inventors," explain the authors.

"Given that there are over 2 million patents with two inventors per patent on average, the `who is who' problem applies to over 4 million `records', which is obviously too large to tackle manually." Which is where IT (information technology) comes to the rescue.

How? The researchers worked on a CMP (computerised matching procedure) to tackle head-on the `who is who' problem, and to arrive at a list of unique inventors, along with detailed data on the inventors' patenting histories.

"We can trace those multiple inventors across time and space, and thus study the causes and consequences of their mobility across countries, regions, and employers," assure the authors. "Given the increasing availability of large computerised data sets on individuals, there may be plenty of opportunities to deploy this methodology to other areas of economic research as well," they hope. "These data will soon be opened to all researchers, hopefully encouraging a new wave of studies," promises the paper.

"Deployment of powerful ICTs (information and communications technologies) has been one of the main forces pushing scientific progress for decades, as best exemplified by the Genome project (and more recently by Proteomics)," note the authors. "Economics has still a long way to go in embracing the possibilities opened by those fast changing technologies - this paper constitutes a small additional step in that direction."

IP in IT

What is the situation closer home? Patent filings in India have increased four-fold in the last five years, informs a paper by on www.ibef.org, the site of IBEF (India Brand Equity Foundation). It cites The Wall Street Journal to state that nearly 800 Indian companies submitted international patent applications to the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) in 2004. "This number may be fairly small by international standards, but is still more than double the number of Indian patents applied for in 2000."

Sunil Mehta, Vice-President of Nasscom (National Association of Software and Service Companies), expects that major revisions to the country's patent laws made in 2005 will begin to have an effect.

"As a result of the Patents (Amendments) Act 2005, pharmaceutical products are now patentable subject matter in India," he explains.

"In putting this legislation on its statute books, India has ensured that it now meets the provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) it signed when becoming a member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995. (It is understood that some 8,000 such applications are currently being dealt with as a result.)"

What about computer-implemented inventions? "In the Ordinance promulgated by President at the end of 2004, which was designed to act as a stop-gap while the full legislation was debated by Parliament, the wording made clear that if an invention was directed at computer software that had technical application to industry, or was coupled with hardware, it could be patentable," says Mehta.

"However, at the insistence of the Left parties, this provision was dropped, meaning that the law has now reverted to its original position, namely that computer programs per se are excluded from patentability." An area worth revisiting, it seems.

Mehta informs that with more Indian IT companies moving up the value chain and focussing on developing software products, and embedded software for new consumer electronic devices, patent filings can increase significantly over the next five years.

"The key constraint is that the filing fees (up to $10,000 and above) are high, deterring small entrepreneurs from applying for a patent," he points out. "In addition, legal expertise available to such small start-ups is inadequate."

The software industry body is, therefore, lobbying for a patent application fund in a public-private partnership model, which would provide bulk of the filing fees to encourage young start-ups to protect their innovations.

"In addition, Nasscom is also working with the Ministry of IT to award preferential treatment in e-governance contracts to bidders, who use IP created by domestic companies." Healthy trends, which should see more IP created in the IT field in India.

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