지식흐름과 기술혁신에 있어서 특허정보의 역할

Patent information means all information in relation to patent applications and issued patents. Therefore it contains very valuable information for researchers and scientists in the process of developing technical innovations. Patent information conveys up-to-date technologies since patents are issued to novel inventions. Patent information is available in vast area of technologies because patentable subject matters include inventions in almost all industrial fields. However patent information is not utilized as much as expected in research and development process. In the open innovation environment, the knowledge flows between universities and industries are very important. New ideas and innovations are induced by university-industry cooperation and science-technology linkages. However professors mainly publish scientific papers, while industries apply patents. This paper contains some suggestions to increase usefulness of patent information. It seems that inventors provide information barely sufficient to be granted patents under the current law. Therefore, an amendment of the patent law must be considered so that the descriptions of inventions should reveal all information including best mode of inventions. Experts outside the intellectual property office should be able to participate freely in the examination process of patent applications for quality improvement. Knowledge flows are also incurred by personal exchanges. For references, papers published in scientific journals are reviewed and criticized openly by peers to reserve high reputation. For the closing remarks, the current patent system must be revised to increase the usefulness of patent information so that patents accelerate technological innovation through active knowledge flows.