Network of international intellectual property rights research activity for national IP policy

While the significance of innovation is on the increase in society and economy, it is a pressing issue to understand the field of intellectual property rights (IPR) panoramically; however, almost no such meta-structure in theory has been introduced to this present day. The authors have analyzed academic papers in the IPR field to identify the areas and issues discussed in the field, and to present the latest research field in IPR. Specifically, we recognized the meta-structure of academic researches in the field of IPR that employ the network analysis method. Using the ISI Web of Knowledge, an academic research database, we conducted a panoramic analysis of IPR researches in the work published from 1956 through citation analysis. As a result, 3,833 academic papers were extracted as the largest connected component of the network of IPR. We divide it into five main clusters. We also discovered that there is a chasm in citation among the fields. Through a time series analysis, we identified “academic activity & patent” as the recently growing research field. We thus succeeded in the systematic identification of the entire cumulative picture of academic knowledge in this field, which is vital for the future reform of IPR systems.