Recognition of emerging technology trends: class-selective study of citations in the U.S. Patent Citation Network

By adopting a citation-based recursive ranking method for patents the evolution of new fields of technology can be traced. Specifically, it is demonstrated that the laser/inkjet printer technology emerged from the recombination of two existing technologies: sequential printing and static image production. The dynamics of the citations coming from the different “precursor” classes illuminates the mechanism of the emergence of new fields and give the possibility to make predictions about future technological development. For the patent network the optimal value of the PageRank damping factor is close to 0.5; the application of d = 0.85 leads to unacceptable ranking results.