Abstract
Although there have been significant achievements in dental caries prevention and management in the European Union (EU), there is still a lot to be done. One approach to reduce caries prevalence is to promote novel technologies in prevention, diagnosis and treatment. The current EU Health Strategy supports and sets development of new technologies as a priority since new technologies can contribute to the efficiency and sustainability of health systems.
Aim: The aim of this work was to provide a patent landscape analysis to detect patterns of innovation in the area of caries research.
Methods: Patent analysis is a well-established method for studying development in a particular research area. In this study patents and patent applications were extracted from the Patbase, an international database from over 100 patent issuing authorities worldwide. The patents were searched combining different search terms related to dental caries in the titles, abstract, claims and examples of documents. Searches were limited to human necessities (CPC A61).
Results: The analysis was based on patenting activity trend, geographical distribution, research topics and patent holders. The patent search resulted in 2089 patent families with 12640 applications. The analysis of the place of patent filing resulted in 80 jurisdictions, with strong US dominance. To understand the technology focus, patents were grouped under three
concepts: prevention, diagnosis and treatment. The highest numbers of patented innovation was associated with a few directions in treatment research. The overall patenting trend showed an increase in filings up to 1992, then a second spike up to 2015. Although the main patent holder was the Colgate Palmolive Co. out of 1371 assignees, in the field of prevention Johnson and Johnson had an important role.
Conclusion: Patenting activity was found to have been intense in the last 10-15 years. Private sector companies dominate a wide variety of types of research, including the field of prevention.
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