• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.127-139
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• 2013

With an advent of recent knowledge-based society, the interest in intellectual property has increased. Firms have tired to result in productive outcomes through continuous innovative activity. Especially, ICT firms which lead high-tech industry have tried to manage intellectual property more systematically. Firm's interest in the patent has increased in order to manage the innovative activity and Knowledge property. The patent involves not only simple information but also important values as information of technology, management and right. Moreover, as the patent has the detailed contents regarding technology development activity, it is regarded as valuable data. The patent which reflects technology spread and research outcomes and business performances are closely interrelated as the patent is considered as a significant the level of firm's innovation. As the patent information which represents companies' intellectual capital is accumulated continuously, it has become possible to do quantitative analysis. The advantages of patent in the related industry information and it's standardize information can be easily obtained. Through the patent, the flow of knowledge can be determined. The patent information can analyze in various levels from patent to nation. The patent information is used to analyze technical status and the effects on performance. The patent which has a high frequency of citation refers to having high technological values. Analyzing the patent information contains both citation index analysis using the number of citation and network analysis using citation relationship. Network analysis can provide the information on the flows of knowledge and technological changes, and it can show future research direction. Studies using the patent citation analysis vary academically and practically. For the citation index research, studies to analyze influential big patent has been conducted, and for the network analysis research, studies to find out the flows of technology in a certain industry has been conducted. Social network analysis is applied not only in the sociology, but also in a field of management consulting and company's knowledge management. Research of how the company's network position has an impact on business performances has been conducted from various aspects in a field of network analysis. Social network analysis can be based on the visual forms. Network indicators are available through the quantitative analysis. Social network analysis is used when analyzing outcomes in terms of the position of network. Social network analysis focuses largely on centrality and structural holes. Centrality indicates that actors having central positions among other actors have an advantage to exert stronger influence for exchange relationship. Degree centrality, betweenness centrality and closeness centrality are used for centrality analysis. Structural holes refer to an empty place in social structure and are defined as efficiency and constraints. This study stresses and analyzes firms' network in terms of the patent and how network characteristics have an influence on business performances. For the purpose of doing this, seventy-four ICT companies listed in S&P500 are chosen for the sample. UCINET6 is used to analyze the network structural characteristics such as outdegree centrality, betweenness centrality and efficiency. Then, regression analysis test is conducted to find out how these network characteristics are related to business performance. It is found that each network index has significant impacts on net income, i.e. business performance. However, it is found that efficiency is negatively associated with business performance. As the efficiency increases, net income decreases and it has a negative impact on business performances. Furthermore, it is shown that betweenness centrality solely has statistically significance for the multiple regression analysis with three network indexes. The patent citation network analysis shows the flows of knowledge between firms, and it can be expected to contribute to company's management strategies by analyzing company's network structural positions.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.21-37
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• 2013

Recently, as the advent of the knowledge-based society, there are more people getting interested in the intellectual property. Especially, the ICT companies leading the high-tech industry are working hard to strive for systematic management of intellectual property. As we know, the patent information represents the intellectual capital of the company. Also now the quantitative analysis on the continuously accumulated patent information becomes possible. The analysis at various levels becomes also possible by utilizing the patent information, ranging from the patent level to the enterprise level, industrial level and country level. Through the patent information, we can identify the technology status and analyze the impact of the performance. We are also able to find out the flow of the knowledge through the network analysis. By that, we can not only identify the changes in technology, but also predict the direction of the future research. In the field using the network analysis there are two important analyses which utilize the patent citation information; citation indicator analysis utilizing the frequency of the citation and network analysis based on the citation relationships. Furthermore, this study analyzes whether there are any impacts between the size of the company and patent citation relationships. 74 S&P 500 registered companies that provide IT and communication services are selected for this study. In order to determine the relationship of patent citation between the companies, the patent citation in 2009 and 2010 is collected and sociomatrices which show the patent citation relationship between the companies are created. In addition, the companies' total assets are collected as an index of company size. The distance between companies is defined as the absolute value of the difference between the total assets. And simple differences are considered to be described as the hierarchy of the company. The QAP Correlation analysis and MR-QAP analysis is carried out by using the distance and hierarchy between companies, and also the sociomatrices that shows the patent citation in 2009 and 2010. Through the result of QAP Correlation analysis, the patent citation relationship between companies in the 2009's company's patent citation network and the 2010's company's patent citation network shows the highest correlation. In addition, positive correlation is shown in the patent citation relationships between companies and the distance between companies. This is because the patent citation relationship is increased when there is a difference of size between companies. Not only that, negative correlation is found through the analysis using the patent citation relationship between companies and the hierarchy between companies. Relatively it is indicated that there is a high evaluation about the patent of the higher tier companies influenced toward the lower tier companies. MR-QAP analysis is carried out as follow. The sociomatrix that is generated by using the year 2010 patent citation relationship is used as the dependent variable. Additionally the 2009's company's patent citation network and the distance and hierarchy networks between the companies are used as the independent variables. This study performed MR-QAP analysis to find the main factors influencing the patent citation relationship between the companies in 2010. The analysis results show that all independent variables have positively influenced the 2010's patent citation relationship between the companies. In particular, the 2009's patent citation relationship between the companies has the most significant impact on the 2010's, which means that there is consecutiveness regarding the patent citation relationships. Through the result of QAP correlation analysis and MR-QAP analysis, the patent citation relationship between companies is affected by the size of the companies. But the most significant impact is the patent citation relationships that had been done in the past. The reason why we need to maintain the patent citation relationship between companies is it might be important in the use of strategic aspect of the companies to look into relationships to share intellectual property between each other, also seen as an important auxiliary of the partner companies to cooperate with.