Evidence of insufficient quality of reporting in patent landscapes in the life sciences

Abstract

Despite the importance of patent landscape analyses in the commercialization process for life science and healthcare technologies, the quality of reporting for patent landscapes published in academic journals is inadequate. Patents in the life sciences are a critical metric of innovation and a cornerstone for the commercialization of new life-science- and healthcare-related technologies. Patent landscaping has emerged as a methodology for analyzing multiple patent documents to uncover technological trends, geographic distributions of patents, patenting trends and scope, highly cited patents and a number of other uses. Many such analyses are published in high-impact journals, potentially allowing them to gain high visibility among academic, industry and government stakeholders. Such analyses may be used to inform decision-making processes, such as prioritization of funding areas, identification of commercial competition (and therefore strategy development), or implementation of policy to encourage innovation or to ensure responsible licensing of technologies. Patent landscaping may also provide a means for answering fundamental questions regarding the benefits and drawbacks of patenting in the life sciences, a subject on which there remains considerable debate but limited empirical evidence.