Invention as a combinatorial process: evidence from US patents

Invention has been commonly conceptualized as a search over a space of combinatorial possibilities. Despite the existence of a rich literature, spanning a variety of disciplines, elaborating on the recombinant nature of invention, we lack a formal and quantitative characterization of the combinatorial process underpinning inventive activity. Here, we use US patent records dating from 1790 to 2010 to formally characterize invention as a combinatorial process. To do this, we treat patented inventions as carriers of technologies and avail ourselves of the elaborate system of technology codes used by the United States Patent and Trademark Office to classify the technologies responsible for an invention's novelty. We find that the combinatorial inventive process exhibits an invariant rate of ‘exploitation’ (refinements of existing combinations of technologies) and ‘exploration’ (the development of new technological combinations). This combinatorial dynamic contrasts sharply with the creation of new technological capabilities—the building blocks to be combined—that has significantly slowed down. We also find that, notwithstanding the very reduced rate at which new technologies are introduced, the generation of novel technological combinations engenders a practically infinite space of technological configurations.

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Open-Ended Technological Innovation

Artificial Life ◽

10.1162/artl_a_00279 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 25 (1) ◽

pp. 33-49 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Mark A. Bedau ◽

Nicholas Gigliotti ◽

Tobias Janssen ◽

Alec Kosik ◽

Ananthan Nambiar ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Technological Innovation ◽

Semantic Space ◽

The United States ◽

Digital Data ◽

High Dimensional ◽

Technological Innovations ◽

Clustering Methods ◽

Patent Classification ◽

Patented Inventions ◽

States Patent

We detect ongoing innovation in empirical data about human technological innovations. Ongoing technological innovation is a form of open-ended evolution, but it occurs in a nonbiological, cultural population that consists of actual technological innovations that exist in the real world. The change over time of this population of innovations seems to be quite open-ended. We take patented inventions as a proxy for technological innovations and mine public patent records for evidence of the ongoing emergence of technological innovations, and we compare two ways to detect it. One way detects the first instances of predefined patent pigeonholes, specifically the technology classes listed in the United States Patent Classification (USPC). The second way embeds patents in a high-dimensional semantic space and detects the emergence of new patent clusters. After analyzing hundreds of years of patent records, both methods detect the emergence of new kinds of technologies, but clusters are much better at detecting innovations that are unanticipated and undetected by USPC pigeonholes. Our clustering methods generalize to detect unanticipated innovations in other evolving populations that generate ongoing streams of digital data.

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Feminism and Dualism in Intellectual Property

10.31235/osf.io/jhcym ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Dan Burk

Keyword(s):

Intellectual Property ◽

New Technologies ◽

Technological Development ◽

The United States ◽

Patent Law ◽

United States Patent ◽

Property System ◽

Human Effort ◽

The Mind ◽

States Patent

Intellectual property law constitutes one of the primary policy tools by which society influences the development and design of new technologies. However, the underlying philosophical basis for this system of rewards has gone largely unexamined. For example, implicit in the intellectual property system is a strong element of mind/body dualism that informs the incentives for technological development. In copyright, the work created and owned by an author is idealized as an intangible form, which may be embodied or fixed in a tangible medium of expression. The parallel patent law doctrine of inventorship shows an even more striking pattern of dualism. In the United States patent priority is decided primarily on the basis of conception of the invention in the mind of the inventor; the actual building or reduction to practice of the invention is held largely irrelevant.Similarly, both patent and copyright doctrine entail a strong element of nature/culture dualism. In patent law, this manifests as the product of nature doctrine, holding that only the products of human effort are patentable, and not discoveries drawn from nature. In copyright, facts and other natural occurrences are excluded from copyright as being unoriginal, that is, not originating from the creativity of an author. Both systems assume that facts or properties embedded in the fabric of reality can be separated from the human activity that observes and defines such facts and properties.

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The Evolution and Spatial Dimensions of Invention in Canada, 1991 - 2011

10.32920/ryerson.14667888 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Yiyan Liang

Keyword(s):

Metropolitan Areas ◽

Rapid Development ◽

Geographic Location ◽

High Technology ◽

The United States ◽

Regional Innovation ◽

Inventive Activity ◽

Spatial Dimensions ◽

States Patent ◽

Socio Economic Factors

The rapid development of information technology and medical research in the 21st century is a result of the increasing number of inventions. Inventive activity is thought to be an important catalyst for economic change and increased productivity. In order to measure a location’s inventive potential, different aspects such as geographic location, corporate assistance, and socio-economic factors can be studied. This study examines the spatial distribution and typology of Canadian inventions for the years 1991, 2001, 2006, and 2011, using patent data issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The research results suggest that inventive activity is declining in major metropolitan areas such as Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. On the other hand, medium-sized metropolitan areas like Ottawa, Calgary, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Saskatoon are experiencing increasing inventiveness. These areas have specialized economies based on high technology and petroleum. The regression analysis shows that regional innovation can be explained by census variables in groups of dwelling type, education level, and industry sector. The analysis also shows Canada has shifted from a manufacturing economy to a high technology and services-based economy.

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Selling Ideas

Inventing Ideas ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190936075.003.0011 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 287-316

Author(s):

B. Zorina Khan

Keyword(s):

Multinational Corporations ◽

The United States ◽

Global Market ◽

International Standards ◽

Legal Rules ◽

Transfer Of Technology ◽

National Differences ◽

Patent Rights ◽

Inventive Activity ◽

Patented Inventions

An extensive global market in patent rights and patented inventions helped creative men and women to increase their returns from inventive activity. Prominent multinational corporations further depended on portfolios of patents to acquire and maintain their domestic and worldwide competitive advantage. Markets in ideas aided the transfer of technology across the United States, Britain, Germany, Canada, Spain, and Japan. Patterns in the sale of patents and foreign patenting were responsive to national differences in incentives, legal rules, and institutions. The results shed light on central debates in economic development, including the net benefits of tailoring patent institutions to individual circumstances, relative to adherence to harmonized international standards.

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The Growing Complexity of the United States Patent System

10.31235/osf.io/stgqb ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Mark Lemley

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Random Sample ◽

New Technologies ◽

The United States ◽

Patent System ◽

United States Patent ◽

Data Set ◽

Prior Art ◽

System P ◽

States Patent

In this Article, we compare a data set of 1000 U.S. patents issued between1996 and 1998 to a similarly random sample of 1000 patents issued twentyyears earlier, between 1976 and 1978. By studying the differences betweenthe groups, we can get a clear picture of how the patent system has changedover time. The results are dramatic. By almost any measure - subjectmatter, time spent in prosecution, number of prior art references cited,number of claims, number of continuation applications filed, number ofinventors - the patents issued in the late 1990s are more complex thanthose issued in the 1970s. While some of these effects are attributable tothe patenting of new technologies like biotechnology and software, unknownin the early 1970s, the increase in complexity is robust even across areasof technology. Further, the patent system in the 1990s is moreheterogeneous than it was in the 1970s. There are far greater differencesby area of technology and by nationality in how patents are beingprosecuted in the 1990s than there were in the 1970s. We explore a numberof possible explanations for these results, and discuss the policyimplications of the lack of uniformity that now characterizes our patentsystem.

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The Evolution and Spatial Dimensions of Invention in Canada, 1991 - 2011

10.32920/ryerson.14667888.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Yiyan Liang

Keyword(s):

Metropolitan Areas ◽

Rapid Development ◽

Geographic Location ◽

High Technology ◽

The United States ◽

Regional Innovation ◽

Inventive Activity ◽

Spatial Dimensions ◽

States Patent ◽

Socio Economic Factors

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Optimal DNA Codes for Computing and Self-Assembly

Theoretical and Technological Advancements in Nanotechnology and Molecular Computation ◽

10.4018/978-1-60960-186-7.ch001 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 1-14

Author(s):

Max H. Garzon ◽

Vinhthuy Phan ◽

Andrew Neel

Keyword(s):

Gibbs Energy ◽

Self Assembly ◽

Building Blocks ◽

Exhaustive Search ◽

High Quality ◽

Quantitative Characterization ◽

Dna Codes ◽

Large Sets ◽

Very High

DNA has been re-discovered and explored in the last decade as a “smart glue” for self-assembly from the “bottom-up” at nanoscales through mesoscales to micro- and macro-scales. These applications require an unprecedented degree of precision in placing atom-scale components. Finding large sets of probes to serve as anchors for such applications has been thus explored in the last few years through several methods. We describe results of a tour de force to conduct an exhaustive search to produce large codes that are (nearly) maximal sets while guaranteeing high quality, as measured by the minimum Gibbs energy between any pair of code words, and other criteria. We also present a quantitative characterization of the sets for sizes up to 20-mers and show how critical building blocks can be extracted to produce codes of very high quality for larger lengths by probabilistic combinations, for which an exhaustive search is out of reach.

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