Abstract
The statistical use of patents to determine the trend of research fields in an industry, country or firm is based on the postulate that there is a correlation between research and patents, and that patents can be considered as a valid indicator of technology. The truth, however, may disprove this postulate. A company may have gained such an advance in a given field that it prefers to keep its knowledge secret rather than risking, by applying for patents, to reveal a significant portion to its leading competitors. A company may, on the other hand, apply first for patents to cover technologies and products that it intends to promote, and then for ‘smoke-screen’ patents to camouflage its true choices. As such the survey analyst must crosscheck information coming from different sources so as to give the data acquired their true position.
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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Girard, A., Moureau, M. (1991). Statistical analysis of patents applied to a separation process. In: Collier, H.R. (eds) Chemical Information 2. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-85872-7_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-85872-7_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-53199-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-85872-7
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