本研究結合專利分析與供應鏈的概念提出技術供應鏈的想法,並發展一套可供專利權人進行策略聯盟參考的平台,以薄膜太陽能電池之製程為例,在該領域中,本研究先試著先將專利映射至薄膜太陽能電池的技術供應鏈中,以展現專利在生產系統的製程中的歸屬,接著,透過標準化C描述子與專利計數,分別衡量並找出在各製程中,質與量表現均強勢的關鍵專利權人,最後,藉由供應鏈中專利權人的水平強化與垂直強化的觀點進行策略的擬定,其中,水平強化追隨全域或鄰近製程控制之願景;垂直強化則以主導單一製程之依歸。該平台能為專利權人推薦聯盟對象,並列出建議聯盟對象的優先順序。
The main objective of this research is to introduce a novel, simple yet reliable method for patent analysis, which is Technology Supply Chain (TSC). Derived from Supply Chain (SC) concept, TSC shows how patents related and used process by process in a production system. Entities in SC (i.e. Supplier, manufacturer, distributor, etc) are substituted with production treads. Patents are retrieved from USPTO and classified based on their related expediency to each tread. Analysis is executed from assignee point of view, based on two aspects; quality and quantity, where the measurements indexes of these aspects are represented by normalized C-descriptor and Patent Count. A significant contribution of this research is a platform for alliance between assignees, taking thin film solar cell as a case study. Strategies build from the analysis are distinguished in two main part; horizontal and vertical enhancement. Horizontal enhancement applied in terms of full supply chain control and neighborhood integration while vertical enhancement applied for dominating one process. Since several strategies are presented, at the end a priority list of these strategies will be included. In conclusion, this research tries to filter out the possible assignees that fulfill requirements for alliance and design some reasonable strategies.