p at e n t s
Patent landscaping for life sciences innovation:
toward consistent and transparent practices
Tania Bubela, E Richard Gold, Gregory D Graff, Daniel R Cahoy, Dianne Nicol & David Castle
As industry, governments and academia increasingly rely on patent landscapes to map scientific and
technological trends, an interdisciplinary workshop provides recommendations for developing consistent and
transparent landscaping practices.
M ore than ever before, industry, govern-
© 2013 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.
ments and academia rely on ‘landscapes’
to map scientific and technological trends
within specific fields of science and technol-
ogy. A landscape is an analysis of the relation-
ships between multiple sets of indicators or of
those indicators measured against temporal,
technical or spatial dimensions. Indicators
might include scientific articles, patents, clin-
ical or field trials, regulatory approvals, and
actors or institutions. Additional analyses can
represent network connections or the density
of clusters of scientific or technological fields.
As countries within the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development
strive to integrate science policy and innova-
tion strategy1, they place greater reliance on
landscapes to track trends and support the
coordination of activities, actors and institu-
npg
tions2.
Despite the growing prevalence and
importance of landscapes, including some
published in high-impact scientific and
policy journals, serious inconsistencies
Tania Bubela is at the School of Public Health,
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada; E. Richard Gold is in the Faculty of
Law, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec,
Canada; Gregory D. Graff is in the Department
of Agricultural and Resource Economics,
Colorado State University, Fort Collins,
Colorado, USA; Daniel R. Cahoy is at Smeal
College of Business, The Pennsylvania State
University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA;
Dianne Nicol is in the Faculty of Law, University
of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia; and
David Castle is at Innogen Institute, University
of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
e-mail: tbubela@ualberta.ca
202
persist in landscaping techniques3. These cre-
ate obstacles in assessing the informational
value of individual landscapes and in com-
paring, combining and extending multiple
landscapes. A second challenge arises from
the lack of transparency about the data and
techniques used. In response, three of the
authors (Bubela, Castle, Gold) organized a
workshop with representatives from indus-
try, academia, public funding agencies, pat-
ent offices and other government agencies.
Workshop participants discussed landscap-
ing practices and challenges for the repre-
sentative field of synthetic biology. Based
on workshop presentations and discussion,
the authors developed recommendations to
improve landscaping methodologies and to
make their use more consistent and trans-
parent. Workshop participants reviewed the
recommendations. This article focuses on
patents as the most commonly used indica-
tor in landscapes4.
Patent landscapes vary in scale and scope,
ranging from specific in-depth analyses
of a narrow range of patents to large-scale
landscaping of entire technological fields.
Landscapes of any scale seek to encompass,
as much as possible, an entire population of
relevant data, rather than a random sample
drawn from that population. In science and
technology, as well as in legal disputes, single
seminal events can be crucial to understand-
ing an entire field, but can easily be missed in
a random sample. The resulting data can be
visualized graphically or can comprise counts
of indicators across selected dimensions.
The data capture portions of the applied and
translational research environment, identify-
ing areas of research and development (R&D)
considered to be of commercial value and
providing an understanding of the potential
volume 31 number 3 MARCH 2013 nature biotechnology
influence of intellectual property (IP) rights
on innovation. Although freedom-to-operate
opinions fall within the formal definition of a
landscape, they follow a set of norms unique
to the practice of law and focus on the analy-
sis of potential liabilities. Also closely related
are corporate, regional or national assess-
ments of R&D activities; however, to the
extent that they cut across multiple fields of
technology found within the individual firm
or geographic region, while excluding any
context beyond its boundaries, they fail to fit
the definition of a landscape. We therefore do
not discuss them further.
Tailoring analytical strategies
The most effective patent landscaping pro-
tocols align scope and methodology with
the purpose of the target audience and the
specific issues to be addressed (Table 1).
Various audiences, particularly policy makers
and academic consumers, share an interest in
some of the same issues; other communitites
have narrowly defined, unique interests.
Similarly, practitioners of patent landscap-
ing vary from dedicated corporate actors
conducting analyses for internal or contract
purposes, to researchers interested in aca-
demic or policy questions, to government
agencies, such as policy branches of national
IP offices and international organizations.
For industry, patent landscapes can enable
a high-level understanding of a sector for
strategic planning, especially across juris-
dictions5. An analysis of other actors in the
same technology space can assist a company
in evaluating its initial idea in relation to
potential competitors, distribution channels
and partners. An analysis of the way claims
are drafted (e.g., narrowly or broadly) for
similar technologies in different jurisdictions
 pat e n t s

or areas of growth. Conversely, investment

Table 1 Landscaping issues and analysis
Issues that can be addressed
through landscaping
What aspects of particular
technologies, products or fields
do patents cover?
How do patent rights affect
certain firms or institutions?
How do patent rights map to
geographic regions or
countries?
Which patents are the most
© 2013 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.
Type of landscape/analysis
Technology landscape
Comparative technology landscape
Prior art search
Licensing opportunity analysis
Institutional portfolio analysis
Inventor portfolio analysis
Performance review
Competitor analysis
Industry analysis
Regional innovation indicators
Innovation cluster analysis
Foreign filing analysis
International patent family landscape
Country/region of inventor and move-
ment over time
Claim construction
Common metrics
Classification/claim type/
technology keywords X
• Issued patents
• Patent applications
• Country of origin
• Assignee/inventor
Assignee(s)/inventor(s) X
• Issued patents
• Patent applications
• Country of origin
• Classification/claim type
Geography/region X
• Classification/claim type
• Issued patents
• Patent applications
• Country of origin
• Assignee/inventor
• Number/scope of claims
can be spurred in underfunded or emer-
gent fields in response to a growth in R&D
in competitor markets. Tracking inven-
tor affiliations and applicant firm histo-
ries can enable policy makers to analyze
the flow of human resources within and
between jurisdictions. For example, China
is attracting researchers and promoting
studies abroad for its citizens to advance its
high-technology research agenda in fields
such as nanotech9.
Further, assessing the level of innovation in
specific fields can assist regulators and tech-
nology assessment agencies to proactively
develop policies and procedures for emerging
technologies. The forecasts enabled by land-
scapes are invaluable because it takes time
to adapt existing regulatory frameworks for
health, food and drugs, environmental and
laboratory practices to new technologies.

important or valuable?
How do patents relate to one
another?
How might patents affect
innovation or competition
policy?
Bibliometric analyses
Litigation analysis
Bibliometric analyses
Network citation analyses
Semantic similarity analysis
Patent counts
Patent claims analysis
Patent density
Statistical modeling
• Forward citation
• Patent families
• Litigation
• Maintenance fees
• Forward/backward citations
• Keywords
• Co-inventorship
• Assignee/inventor links
• Network statistics
• Scope of claims
• Issued patents
• Classification/claim type
• Patent applications
• Country of origin
• Assignee/inventor
In addition to defining the broad con-
tours of a technology, patent landscaping
can be used to address specific questions
of policy and academic relevance. These
include assessing the impact of permissive or
restrictive research and IP policies in specific
technology sectors and identifying emerging
patent thickets, blocking patents or potential
antitrust issues. With this knowledge, policy
makers will be in a better position to inter-
vene—through the exercise of government
use rights, waiver of sovereign immunity,
compulsory licensing or the development
of guidelines for the issuance of patents—or
refrain from intervening, as appropriate.

can assist in developing patent drafting strate- and policy makers. For example, the JPO Patent landscaping methodologies
gies. Referred to as claims construction, such has been tracking the rise of patenting by When engaging in patent landscaping, prac-
npg

analysis can also assist in identifying prior art
that ought to be referenced or distinguished
to meet patent criteria of novelty and inven-
tiveness. Monitoring the field is essential for
longer-term asset management and the devel-
opment of market strategies as well as firm val-
uation and portfolio analysis for investment,
and mergers and acquisitions6.
Some IP offices engage in larger-scale
patent landscaping to assist national or
regional innovative firms and government
agencies that set science and technology
policies or funding strategies. For example,
the United Kingdom Intellectual Property
Office (UKIPO) has a policy branch that
produces landscapes and analyses of specific
technology domains of strategic interest for
economic development in the UK, such as
stem cell research7. Similarly, the policy unit
of the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) tracks
technology of national interest to provide
advice and information to Japanese industry
Chinese applicants in Japan, especially in
the field of nanotech. The European Patent
Office (EPO) engaged in a joint project with
the United Nations Environment Program
and the International Centre for Trade and
Sustainable Development (ICTSD) to land-
scape patents on clean energy technologies8.
Patent offices are uniquely positioned to pro-
vide landscapes to guide national industrial
policy and firm strategies. They have access
to internal databases—including correspon-
dence between examiners and applicants—
and to highly qualified technical staff with
not only scientific knowledge, but also an
understanding of how to interpret patent
claims, of emerging terminology and of the
patenting process itself.
Broader analyses comparing technology
fields over time and between jurisdictions
can inform national investments in R&D.
Funding can be directed toward identi-
fied regional strengths, innovative sectors
titioners generally begin by defining the
purpose of the proposed landscape and its
potential scope combined with a realistic
assessment of time and cost constraints4.
Data collection and processing phases are
especially time consuming, and the need to
access proprietary databases can increase
costs. Maximizing data capture at the first
stage increases the likelihood that retrieved
data can be reanalyzed if the focus changes
as different analyses based on different sets
of metrics can be applied to collected data
sets, depending on the issue to be addressed.
The most common strategy is to define a field
of interest and develop a search strategy that
captures as complete a set of patent docu-
ments as possible. An alternative strategy is to
define foundational or enabling technology
patents and then build a larger set of follow-on
patents through linkages between patent doc-
uments, such as by following citations. This
second strategy can be useful for emerging

nature biotechnology volume 31 number 3 MARCH 2013 203

 pat e n t s

but ill-defined fields such as nanotech and
synthetic biology. Figure 1 illustrates the
iterative process of patent landscaping.
Search. Once the broad issues and the over-
all strategy have been determined, the next
step is to design the specific search strat-
egy. This necessitates an identification of a
suitable patent database from among both
publicly available and proprietary options,
many of which are listed in a resource pro-
vided by the Patent Information Users Group
(http://piug.wildapricot.org/vendors), fol-
lowed by the development of database-
specific search algorithms combined with
limits to the scope of the search (for example,
date, legal status or patent class/code)10. At
this stage, it is advantageous to consult with
a specialist in information science who is spe-
cifically trained in the development of search
algorithms.
© 2013 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.
an exception to the latter, enabling search-
ing in multiple languages and tools specific
for searching protein and DNA sequences
worldwide (http://www.patentlens.net). The
World Intellectual Property Organization’s
(WIPO) Patent Scope is another excep-
tion, as it provides basic visual represen-
tations of patent application data such as
inventor or country of origin (http://patent
scope.wipo.int/search/en/search.jsf ). Private
databases, most notably Thomson Innovation
and Elsevier’s Scopus Database, enable com-
plex search algorithms (Boolean and/or
natural language) across multiple jurisdic-
tions, provide hand-curated information in
addition to standard information based on
public data, and higher-order analytics, such
as corporate histories and sophisticated visu-
alization tools.
The database-specific search algorithm
can combine sets of keywords comprising
new Cooperative Patent Classification has
recently been made available as a joint ini-
tiative to speed the patent granting process
between the US Patent and Trademark Office
and the EPO, and has replaced the US and
European classes as of January 1, 2013.
Other limits on searches can be orga-
nized by geography, assignees, inventors
or other definitional fields. One example
is the Ade/Cook-Deegan algorithm used
by the DNA Patent Database housed at
Georgetown University in Washington, DC,
to identify all DNA and RNA patents in
the Delphion database (http://dnapatents.
georgetown.edu/SearchAlgorithm-
Delphion-20030512.htm). Another is the
algorithm developed by Bergman and Graff
to capture all stem cell–related patents in
the Thomson Innovation database12. Such
algorithms are developed in consultation
with technical experts. Expert validation

Although free, public databases have lim-
ited capabilities for complex search algo-
rithms, provide only basic informational
fields within specific countries or regions,
and generally provide limited higher-
order analytic tools11. PatentLens, from
the Initiative for Open Innovation (IOI), is
Assess time &
cost constraints
synonyms for specific technologies or broad
fields. Keywords are often combined with
patent class codes that group patents into
technological categories. Patent class codes
include the US Class (USC), International
Patent Class (IPC), European Patent Class
(EPC) and Derwent Manual Codes. The
ensures that important branches or key tech-
nologies within a field are not omitted, and
conversely, refines the algorithm to reduce
the percentage of irrelevant documents. The
steps of algorithm development, and the next
steps of data collection, data cleaning, data
curation and exploratory analyses are neces-
sarily iterative and reliant on expert input to
arrive at a final data set capable of address-
ing strategic, policy or academic questions.
The breadth or specificity of such questions
is dependent on scale and quality.

Cleaning and curating. The next step,

Define purpose and scope of landscape after the search for and collection of pat-
ent documents, is to clean and curate data,
a time-­consuming exercise, especially if data
Consult with have been collected from multiple public
npg

Design search strategy

information & databases. Cleaning involves reviewing the
• Identify database(s)
technical • Develop search algorithm(s) documents in the data and discarding any
specialists that are outside of the intended scope of the
analysis. Cleaning can be automated using
Data cleaning & curation criteria built into the search function, or
• Merge data sets technical experts can do it manually if the
• Define degree of error tolerated data set is not impracticably large. Data cura-
• Remove irrelevant documents
tion includes the merging of data from dif-
ferent databases into consistently formatted
and structured data sets, possibly followed
Augment data set with by manual or automated mechanisms for
Expert periodic future data updates. International
additional fields or
validation
manual coding analysis of patent data necessarily introduces
the complication of single inventions being
represented as ‘families’ of filings at multiple
patent offices. Curation of a landscape involv-
ing more than one jurisdiction must manage
Higher-order analytics the data at the level of patent family and the
Descriptive Visualization • Importance/value
statistics of trends • Relationships between documents level of individual patent documents8.
• Impact of document on innovation The degree of error that can be toler-
ated, both in terms of the relevance of the
Figure 1 The iterative process of patent landscaping. document set and the structure of individual

204 volume 31 number 3 MARCH 2013 nature biotechnology


fields, depends on the scale of the analysis,
partly based on considerations of time and
cost4. Nevertheless, landscapers must assess
the nature (for example, a tendency toward
over- or under-inclusion) and magnitude of
errors, possibly through a detailed analysis of
a subset of the data set. For broad landscapes
directed toward identifying, as completely as
possible, an entire population of documents,
a metric for assessing data saturation should
be defined and reported. The error types and
rates, as well as underlying assumptions, must
be reported so users may assess the reliability
and validity of a given landscape.
Analysis. Analysis generally commences with
standard exploratory or summary statistics
per data field and simple analyses such as
how these fields vary temporally or by patent
jurisdiction. Landscapes, by definition, are
multidimensional, analyzing document attri-
© 2013 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.
butes across combinations of time, geogra-
phy and technical field. Document attributes
equate to data fields such as inventors, assign-
ees or applicants, legal status, or technology
classification and/or code. Such simple ana-
lytics, although nominally informative, also
provide validation of the prior steps and can
point to the need for further refinements
in the data. The data set can be augmented
with additional data by, for example, cat-
egorizing patent assignees or inventors as
public or private sector actors; coding patent
claims for subject matter, scope or validity; or
doing automated semantic analyses of key-
words descriptive of specific fields or types
of claims, such as distinguishing between
products and processes.
For questions regarding the technology actu-
npg
ally protected, manual coding of the claims of
the patent documents within the landscape is
often essential for meaningful conclusions; for
example, coding whether patents for genetic
diagnostic tests are blocking or can be circum-
vented by public laboratories13. Automated
lexicographic analyses of claims provide only
limited inferences about the nature of the
research activity or the scope of control because
they ignore the subtleties imposed by legisla-
tive texts and court decisions. Experts such as
patent attorneys, agents and examiners are well
versed in these subtleties and are best placed to
conduct such analysis.
Large data sets cannot realistically be
coded by hand. Here, analysts must rely on
coding frames to analyze claims language. In
these cases, it is imperative that the methods,
the background of the coders, their coding
training, measures of intercoder reliability,
and the frame itself are adequately explained
and contextualized.
nature biotechnology volume 31 number 3 MARCH 2013
Qualitative characteristics of patents, such
as their scientific significance or private eco-
nomic value, can be determined by exam-
ining the number of claims, the number of
jurisdictions covered by the patent family and
the number of times the patent is cited14,15.
Studies have shown that the number of cita-
tions made to a patent is related to the private
economic value of that patent16,17. The tech-
nical diversity of citing patents, as indicated
by the range of technology classes they cover,
can be related to the scientific “generality”
or “basicness” of the subject patent18. The
degree to which a patent has been litigated is
also correlated with patent value, and patents
can be linked to litigation databases19.
The final, augmented data set can then
be analyzed using sophisticated visualiza-
tion and graphing techniques or statistical
modeling techniques, depending on the
issues of interest20. There are many avail-
able visualization and analytic tools with
varying utility11. Geographic Information
System (GIS) software can represent nodes
(for example, individuals or cities) and the
strength of the linkages between them on a
geospatial map. Software that visualizes col-
laborative networks of inventors or applicants
can also display node attributes, the strength
of the linkages between them and calcula-
tions of network statistics that indicate how
central or important an actor is within the
network. Thematic maps cluster documents
according to similarity of keywords, showing
peaks and valleys of activity within specific
fields. Lexicographic analyses further allow
the tracking of text between documents so
that keywords, phrases or concepts can be
traced through different forms of documents
originating with different sets of actors, for
example, linking scientific publications with
patents. Finally, bibliometric analyses of cita-
tion patterns (for example, backward and
forward citations and co-citations to other
patents or scientific literature) can help to
analyze the intellectual structure of a disci-
pline to track citations through generations of
publications in a field, or to identify and track
seminal or foundational documents20,21.
Recommendations for practitioners
Landscapes can be powerful tools for devel-
oping policy and business strategy. Most,
however, are relatively simple, relying on
count data and possibly thematic maps4.
Many are opaque in the description of
their methods, risking interpretations that
go beyond the inherent limitations of the
landscape in question. One example is the
much-quoted statistic that 20% of human
genes are patented and likely to impede
pat e n t s
next-generation genetic technologies. This
is based on a novel automated landscaping
method developed by Jensen and Murray,
which mapped sequences named in pat-
ents (as SEQ IDs) to the human genome22.
Further examination of a subset of the pat-
ents by the most accurate method of claim
construction—reading by experts—found
that far fewer of these alleged human gene
patents actually recite human DNA mole-
cules, methods for genetic testing or genetic
sequencing in the claims23,24. Although this
does not undermine the value of the meth-
odology developed by Jensen and Murray,
it points to the misunderstanding and pos-
sible misuse by others of landscaping stud-
ies, particularly where methods are unclear
or misinterpreted.
Landscaping practitioners must be careful
to select methodologies capable of answering
questions of interest at the appropriate scale.
An iterative process with relevant expert
consultation is essential. The limitations of
the databases, search strategies and analyti-
cal methods must be made explicit. Reliance
on proprietary landscapes can accordingly
be problematic because search algorithms
and landscaping methods are rarely pub-
lished. Transparency would be improved if,
when proprietary databases are used, pat-
ent numbers are included in an appendix or
Supplementary Information. This is simply
good practice for all scientific and social sci-
ence research; methods should be readily rep-
licable to assess the validity of conclusions.
Journals can act as gatekeepers to ensure
methodological best practices for social sci-
ence research.
To improve landscaping activities, gov-
ernments, research institutions and private
foundations should support the development
of publicly accessible databases and associ-
ated analytical tools3. This holds true for
patent databases and for publications data-
bases more generally. The best overview of
an innovation landscape can be accomplished
by situating the patent landscape within other
information of R&D and corporate activi-
ties, for example, by cross-referencing to
publications and mergers-and-acquisitions
databases.
Patent and other landscaping techniques
are critical factors in developing science
and technology policy and business strat-
egy. As with many other emerging tech-
niques, early adopters have experimented
with an assortment of methods to provide
valuable insight into technology spaces.
Landscaping techniques are now sufficiently
mature and used widely enough in support of
science and innovation policies that general
205
 pat e n t s
methodologies, reporting criteria and consis-
tent practices ought to be established. These
will enhance the reliability of landscapes
upon which business, government and aca-
demic leaders can base science and technol-
ogy decisions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank the participants from industry,
government agencies and academia at the Managing
Knowledge in Synthetic Biology: The Creation of Tools
for Stronger Intellectual Property Analysis workshop
hosted by the Innogen Institute of the University of
Edinburgh in 2012. The workshop was supported
by VALGEN (Value Addition through Genomics)
and GE3LS (Genomics and its Related Ethical,
Environmental, Economic, Legal and Social Aspects),
a project sponsored by the Government of Canada
through Genome Canada, Genome Prairie and Genome
Quebec, and the PhytoMetaSyn project funded by
Genome Canada, Genome Alberta and Genome
Quebec. We thank A. Baker, D. Lewensohn, M. Bieber
and L. Dacks for administrative and research support.
© 2013 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.
npg
206
COMPETING FINANCIAL INTERESTS
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
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