Paper 101-2013 - SAS

SAS Global Forum 2013
Data Mining and Text Analytics
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Of note in Figure 11 is the significant
increase in patents granted for Apple
starting in 2007. The financial fortunes of
Apple were sharply lower in the 2001-2004
period followed by double digit profitability
from 2005-2007 and an almost doubling of
profits from 2008 – present. Clearly Apple
was in a better financial position to conduct
research after 2004. Additionally, the
resurgence of Apple marketing leading to
the explosion of iPhone ® in 2007 are
strongly correlated to the number of patents
granted.
With the perspective gained from analyzing
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the patent time distribution of our companies
Apple ASUSTek Foxconn Dell
of interest, we now turn to the technologies
of interest. A technology expert from either
thrust listed in Figure 9 could readily create
Figure 11: Time Distribution of Bottom Four Patent Producers
a list of closely related terms. We used the
Concept Linking feature in SAS Enterprise
Miner and Text Miner to look for close association of terms. Some of the results are shown in Figure 9. Next, we
created SAS code that allowed the efficient search of our patent holdings. We found some interesting results. In the
below paragraphs, we show the more noteworthy ones.
Video display technologies are used
in a variety of consumer electronic
devices as well as in commercial and
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military applications.
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Patents Related to Cathode Ray Tube
Samsung
Our research identified a number of
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Toshiba
technical research areas relating to
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large displays (movie theaters),
Sony
computer displays (desktops and
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laptops), and handheld devices. We
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were interested in which companies
seemed to have been the most active
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in these technologies as evidenced in
Years
patents granted.
Apple Asus Dell Foxconn Hp Ibm LG
One of the earliest technologies in
Microsoft Motorola Panasonic Samsung Sony Toshiba
this area is the cathode ray tube –
Figure 12: Patent Time Distribution for Cathode Ray Tube
widely used in televisions and
oscilloscopes. Figure 12 shows decades-long research efforts for many of our selected companies and Samsung’s
prominence in the early 2000s. As other competing technologies became favored, the number of patents dropped
significantly in the latter part of the 2000s.
Patents Related to Light Emitting Diodes
No Patents
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Utility Patents Bottom Four Patent Producers
1990 ‐ September 2012
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Apple Asus Dell Foxconn Hp Ibm LG
Microsoft Motorola Panasonic Samsung Sony Toshiba
Samsung
Figure 13: Patent Time Distribution for Light-Emitting Diodes
No Patents
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Another technology that comes to mind is
the light-emitting-diode (LED), which has
also been used in a variety of applications.
As Figure 13 shows, LED patents span
decades but seem to have exploded in the
mid 2000s with Samsung a strong
contributor in the latter years.
Due to the September cut-off date of our
data set, the sharp downward trends for
Samsung shown in Figure 13 is most likely
misrepresented.
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