Analysis on Indoor Garden Technology Trends Based on Patent Search

Indoor gardens tailored to suit individual tastes offer a place to enjoy plants and to relax to city dwellers to relieve stress from city life. However, there are technical issues to build such indoor gardens. To offer solutions to technical issues, this study aims to analyze development phases of indoor garden-related technologies by studying available patents in detail. Also, the study aims to understand current status and future direction of technologies by examining technological trends for introduction of indoor gardens. Brainstorming method was used to understand technology trends and as a result, two groups were identified for technical features of indoor gardens: indoor greening technology and rest area for users. An analysis on selected patents showed that the number of patents increased until 2010 and declined gradually afterwards. Korea ranked the highest in the number of patents grant followed by USA, Japan and Europe. Similar order was observed with the number of patents granted by nationality of applicants. The number of patents granted by nationality was the highest for Korean nationals. For indoor greening technologies, patents related to structure from 2007 were mostly concentrated in the areas of irrigation control and environment control for plants and vegetation. For rest area related technologies, patent related to structure showed a repetitive pattern of increasing and decreasing, but overall, on downtrend. For further development and dissemination of indoor gardening technology, more R&D work is needed with focus on environmental control technology for designing suitable environment for both human and plant.