Abstract

Users have long been regarded as a useful source for technological innovation. Focusing on patent data, this study aims to investigate the contribution of users to technological innovation in the medical device industry. We first examine the overall trends of patents produced by users, named as user patents, in the target sector, and then analyze the technological characteristics of the user patents that are more likely to be transferred to companies, thus, contributing significantly to the technological innovation in the sector. The analysis results indicate that while the absolute number of user patents has increased, their ratio has decreased in the last ten years. However, despite the diminishing contribution of users, some of the user patents were regarded as highly valuable and transferred to companies for commercialization. In general, patents of lower component familiarity and novelty with high versatility were more likely to be transferred, where user patents strengthened the positive effect of versatility and weakened the negative effect of novelty on patent transferability compared to firm patents. The study's findings are expected to help understand the characteristics of user patents and their transferability in the medical device industry, ultimately promoting the commercialization of user innovation through technology transfer.