Adoption of Biopolymer Technology – An Analysis based on Patents

A collaborative project between ETH Zurich, Switzerland and IIT Roorkee, India.

Plastics and polymers are at the forefront of scientific development. Though technological development today can be judged by the advancement of plastics, an important problem still associated with conventional plastics is non-biodegradability. Following the ‘prevention is better than cure’ paradigm, a more sustainable option would be the incorporation of biodegradable polymers and substitution of conventional polymers with these environmentally friendly variants to the largest feasible scope, both economically as well as technically.
In this project, we seek to analyze the activity in the polymer sector, particularly by analyzing and correlating trends in the registering and patenting of biopolymers. The methodology revolves around the collection of statistical data from patent offices, notably the U.S. Patents and Trademarks Office (USPTO), as well as its European (EPO), Japanese (JPO) and especially Indian (IPO) counterparts. Collected data would then form the foundation for statistical studies which target the development of reliable indicators of economic growth as well as industrial advancement. Further points of investigation include the comparison of biopolymer patents of key economies, especially India and Switzerland with other indicators of technological and economic development.
Ready availability of patent data and the extensive and in-depth classification system of the patent archives also enables the segregation and formation of finer points of comparison between different countries, for example: correlation between the patenting of biopolymers with exclusive use in biotechnological applications and the turnover of the biopolymer based biotechnology industries in a particular country. The primary regions of data analysis include statistical analyses of thrust areas of biopolymer patenting across different economies, temporal analysis of patent data and establishment of growth trends, geographical distribution of biopolymer patents filed and correlations with monetary turnover of these industries in the relevant region. Important conclusions which are targeted include the derivation of indices which effectively capture the implicit relations between biopolymer development and patenting with development of the biotechnology sector, as well as the forecasting of the growth of the biopolymer sector in key economies and hence, with good accuracy, the economic growth of the country, and with high accuracy, the growth of the biotechnology sectors of these countries. Some of the areas previously investigated primarily concerned the number of biopolymer patents being filed in various categories and their correlation to observed trends in the market.
Geographical distribution of patents are used as an indicator of the activity across geographical regions, and a comparison is made between scientific papers published in this field vis-à-vis the number of patents filed to arrive at a comparison between academic work done and results translating into monetary value. Finally, some activity indices are derived from the analyses and used in correlating market share and market growth of the biopolymer sector with the number of patents filed. Trends in the biopolymer sector are thus arrived at.
The projected major outcomes of the project are; one bachelor thesis, a special project report, and one or more articles published in research and practitioners’ journals, as well as a continued collaboration between the two research groups in Switzerland and India.

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