Although investments of R&D by government and firms have enlarged and the amount of patents has increased rapidly, R&D almost fails to commercialize for various reasons. For the purpose of decreasing failure rate of technology commercialization, it is important to identify emerging business based on technology in advance and establish appropriate strategy, leading to surviving at the market. Therefore, this paper aims to explore emerging Research and Business Development (R&BD) areas, and establish a business strategy based on valuable patents by comprehensively analyzing IPRs – patent as well as design and trademark. First, unrevealed but potential R& BD areas are explored by analyzing the relation between patent and trademark through topic modeling and network analysis, which aims to preferentially find potential business opportunities that can be implemented by new technology. Potential R&BD areas are recognized as the hidden link in the network of patents and trademarks. Second, emerging R&BD areas are selected by considering the status of the competition and markets through trademark analysis based on generative topographic mapping (GTM) after finding potential R&BD areas with network analysis from the viewpoint of the applicant for a trademark. Finally, new opportunities and strategies for successful R&BD are suggested by analyzing design patents that are representative of the appearance of a product in detail. The result of this study provides more concrete R&BD strategies within the framework of product and business development, based on relations between IPRs, which can be regarded as an initial study that comprehensively utilizes diverse kinds of IPRs.

Introduction

The economic paradigm is shifting from an asset-based economy to a knowledge-based economy, which makes intellectual property rights (IPRs) management more important. The IPRs involving patent, design, and trademark serve as the driving force of national and economic development (Alikhan, 2002; Gould and Gruben, 1996). If firms or governments neglect IPRs, this brings about the unnecessary and enormous expense, as well as hindering national development (Kanwar and Evenson, 2003). Among others, the patent has been in the limelight within the framework of technology management, because it contains significant information for decades (Ernst, 2003; Wu et al., 2015). Although the basic function of the patent is to protect the owners’ rights and prevent infringements (Nam and Barnett, 2011), it can be also utilized to monitor competitors, assess technology, examine mergers and acquisitions (M&A) options, and manage human resources, based upon the basic function (Ernst, 2003). The trademark has also received a lot of attention, in that it is able to protect marketing assets within firms against competitors, as well as to link a firm with its customers (Sandner and Block, 2011). In this way, patent and trademark have played important roles in strategic planning and making decisions, and so it is necessary to analyze and manage IPRs comprehensively. As the importance of IP management increases, investments in R&D have rapidly expanded worldwide. While this has caused many patent applications and paper publications, some arguments have been made about the efficiency of R&D investment.