“Patents, due to their nature, represent technological evolution and include speculation about how that particular technology might be developed and used in the future,” say Ervin Dubarić and Dimitris Giannoccaro of the Swedish Patent Office, who have been studying various methods and models for predicting and planning the future of technologies, and who are the authors of this article. Some technology prediction methods are based on a life cycle approach, under which technology is expected to follow an S-curve (see Figure 1).
One method, which is known to provide different important economic indicators, is the analysis of patents. The aim of our study is to apply the life cycle approach, using patent applications to study technological development in different technologies, such as wind-power technology, heating using microwaves (i.e. microwave ovens) and nanotechnology. A review of patent applications using the EPO’s ECLA classification scheme has given us an insight into technological development for different technologies. For example, we have been able to show that wind-power technology has penetrated the market and that the maturity stage lies sometime in the future (see Figure 2).
