Mark Pullen. A measure of technological innovation happening within the railway industry in Australia or new railway technology coming

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1 AUSTRALIA IN A GLOBAL MARKET OF INNOVATION Mark Pullen BSc (Hons) Physics, Dip IP Law, Dip IP Practice Patent and Trade Marks Attorneys SUMMARY This presentation considers whether innovation in the railway industry in Australia or innovation originating overseas coming into Australia is being protected through patents. It looks at areas within the industry that are most patently active and at gaps in the industry that do not appear to be well developed or active in the patent field that could be fertile ground for successful innovation. Through 'patent mapping' this paper gives an indication of Australia s innovation activity and place in the global rail innovation landscape, and will highlight how Australia is (or is not) meeting the challenge of the technological demands placed on its rail system. A focus is given to looking at the creation of Australian railway technology rather than solely imported technology, and the international presence that Australian innovation and companies in railway technology now have. INTRODUCTION The railway industry in Australia and overseas has seen obvious technology step changes from steam to diesel and electric locomotion, from semaphore signals to colour lights etc. These are very public developments in railway technology that the wider population will see and know. However, within the railway industry there is a great deal more innovation going on, for example, in terms of safety, rolling stock and track maintenance, locomotive power and fuel efficiency. In Australia, the need to move huge quantities of commodities, such as iron ore and coal, over long distances, and the need to interconnect centres of population, place severe demands on the rail system to meet those challenges, to operate efficiently and effectively. Such demands create problems to be overcome. Solutions to these problems require technological innovation. A measure of technological innovation happening within the railway industry in Australia or new railway technology coming into Australia from overseas can be viewed through companies protecting valuable innovation through the patent system. Patents, after-all, are there to protect, leverage and generate a financial return from innovations arising through valuable (and time and internal resource intense) R&D. This presentation firstly looks at the international patent landscape within which companies operate, and compares the Australian patent landscape with that global view. We then drill down into who is using patents to leverage value for their business in Australia and for what technologies. Such patent mapping exercises also give us an opportunity to monitor competitor activities and to identify technology areas that may be fallow ground for a new market, or identify trends in technology through the patent timeframes. A patent map or landscape is a graphical representation to help visualise patent relationships and populations in a technoplogy space. Presence or absence of patents can be identified for innovation 607

2 planning (avoid re-inventing the wheel or identify fallow ground missed by competitors), as well as determining risk of patent infringement and identifying technology areas being devloped by competitors. Several companies now produce proporietry software that gathers patent data from national patent office or commercial patent databases, and groups that data based on search terms, such as keywords, company and inventor names, forward and backward citation threads, and, importantly, the International Patent Classification 1 system. NOTATION IP means Intellectual Property IPC means the International Patent Classification system THE IP LANDSCAPE The global patent landscape covers all fields of railway technology. The International Patent Classification 1 (IPC) system pigeonholes railway technology into categories. This classification allows published patent specifications to be searched for and identified at a later date. The IPC divides technology into eight sections with approximately 70,000 subdivisions. Each subdivision has a symbol consisting of numerals and letters. The appropriate IPC symbols are indicated on each patent document, of which more than 1,000,000 were issued each year in the last 10 years. The IPC symbols are allotted by the national or regional industrial property office that publishes the patent document. The patent offices of all industrialised countries utilise the IPC system to classify the myriad of innovations. Railway technology falls predominantly in IPC class B61 and its subclasses. Note: technology may also fall in other, non-b61, classes where that technology is applicable to other than railways, and consequently not all railway related technology appears in IPC B61. IPC B61* = Railways The general high level categories covered are: B61B: Railway systems; equipment therefor not otherwise provided for B61C: Locomotives; Motor Railcars B61D: Body details or kinds of railway vehicles B61F: Rail vehicle suspensions; rail vehicles for use on tracks of different widths; preventing derailing; obstruction removers B61G: Couplings; Draft or Buffing Appliances especially for Rail Vehicles B61H: Brakes or other retarding apparatus for rail vehicles B61J: Shifting or shunting of rail vehicles B61K: Other auxiliary equipment for railways B61L: Guiding railway traffic; Ensuring the safety of railway traffic 608

3 Figure 1: IPC B61* patent landscape (worldwide) 2 1. Coverage & Landscapes Patent mapping obtains published patent data from all major patent authorities Derwent database: US, WO (PCT), EP, JP, CN, KR, CA, GB, AU, NZ etc. Note: Patent documents are only published after 18 months from filing. The patent landscape images show topographic representations of the commonality and relationship between catchwords in patents. the total of patent specifications mapped. Conversely, valleys and blue areas show low density populations. The landscape images do not have axes. Figure 1 is a patent landscape showing the general areas covered in mapping technologies covered by published patent specifications across the entire IPC B61* highest level (therefore the broadest) classification key for railway technology. Peaks represent densely populated patent areas in a technology space in that landscape relative to 609

4 Top Applicant HITACHI LTD SIEMENS AG NIPPON SIGNAL CO LTD ALSTOM TRANSPORT SA MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC CORP BOMBARDIER TRANSP GMBH KAWASAKI HEAVY IND LTD HIGASHI NIPPON RYOKAKU TETSUDO KK WESTINGHOUSE AIR BRAKE CO GEN ELECTRIC RAILWAY TECHNICAL RES INST KRRI NIPPON SHARYO SEIZO KK KYOSAN ELECTRIC MFG ZH TETSUDO SOGO GIJUTSU KENKYUSHO Figure 2: B61* Top 15 Applicants worldwide by number of patent filings Data covers 2000 to DAIFUKU CO LTD 2. Top Applicants Overseas companies dominate patent filings relating directly to railways. The predominant companies of origin are from Japan, Europe and USA, as might be expected. Australian companies are not amongst the top echelon for volume of patent filings. This does not mean that Australia is lacking in innovation or innovative companies. Growth of patent filings in B61* worldwide has trended sharply upwards - see Figure 3. Such sharp growth indicates a growing dynamic and competitive market seeking to innovate, and to leverage off that innovation to maintain/grow market share, to partner with or seek investment from other entities. 3. Worldwide growth Through patent mapping we can look at patent population growth and spread for the range of technologies in the railway industry 610

5 Publication Year Figure 3: B61* Growth in patent filings - worldwide 3 4. Patent applications in Australia The absolute number and growth rate of published patent applications originating from Australia can be used as a measure of innovative activity. As can be seen in Figure 4, published patents originating from Australia cover diverse technologies in the railway sector (wide population spread), and, perhaps more importantly, are relatively low in number. this is that overseas companies have local (Australian) R&D departments addressing particular challenges in the Australian market. Another suggestion is that, because of the unique demands on the Australian railway sector (long distance heavy haul and passenger, harsh conditions, dispersed population, challenges for urban rail infrastructure and under investment etc.) independent companies are emerging with home grown solutions to these unique problems. It is likely that there is a mixture of both. This suggests that innovation in Australia in the railway sector is specialised. One suggestion for 611

6 Figure 4: B61* patents published Australia originating 2 Compare the level of published Australian originating patents (Figure 4) with worldwide levels of published patents (Figure 5 below), and it is easy to see that Australia has some way to go before dominating in railway technology. Nevertheless, it is clear from the spread of Australian originating published patents in Figure 4 that innovation in the railway field in Australia is diverse (avoids the peaks) and is aimed largely into less populated, more specialised fields. This suggests that, either Australia has unique problems to solve, that Australia has unique talents, or there is an unconventional approach to R&D, or perhaps a combination of these factors. 612

7 Figure 5: published patents 2011 worldwide 2 5. Rate of Australian Innovation The rate of innovation in the railway industry in Australia may appear to have remained fairly flat in terms patent applications in recent years. However, when the level of patent applications in Australia by year (see Figure 6) is compared to the global level of patent applications (see Figure 3), it is clear that there is a continuing general correlation in terms of percentage. Both worldwide applications and Australian patents saw a dip in patent numbers in the mid 2000s, possibly reflecting Australia s connection to the worldwide railway industry. 613

8 Filing Year for Australian Patents Figure 6: level of filings of Australian patents by year 3 Top Applicant General Electric Company Westinghouse Air Brake Company Alstom Innova Patent GmbH Wabtec Holding Corp. Bombardier Transportation GmbH Siemens Aktiengesellschaft Amsted Industries Incorporated Hitachi Limited Voith Patent GmbH / Turbo Scharfenberg GmbH & Co. KG Figure 7: Australian top patent Applicants by total number of patents Top Australian Applicants Perhaps not unsurprisingly, overseas companies still dominate Australian patent filings for railway technologies. Figure 7 shows the top ten Applicants by level of filings into Australia between 2000 and The specific technologies covered focus largely in telecommunications, control systems, brake systems and couplers. New York Air Brake Corp (21), VAE Gmbh (16), GE Transportation Systems Global Signalling (15), Bradken Resources Pty Ltd (14), Franz Plasser (14), Knorr-Bremse (14), Ansaldo (11) and Colombus Steel Castings (10) were the only other patent applicants in double figures during

9 CONCLUSION This investigation in the realm of patents relating to the railway industry and Australia in particular reveal a healthy picture for Australian railway innovation. Whilst innovation could be better reflected through greater involvement in patents, the general trend in protecting and leveraging innovation is upwards and, importantly, is consistent with worldwide trends. Reassuringly, Australian originating innovation appears to be finding niches in what is otherwise a well populated, mature and competitive marketplace. REFERENCES 1: International Patent Classicisation (IPC) system is administered by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). The IPC was established by the Strasbourg Agreement 1971, and provides for a hierarchical system of language independent symbols for the classification of patents and utility models according to the different areas of technology to which they pertain. 2: Patent landscapes (Figures 1,4 & 5) produced using the 'Themescape' tool from Thomson Innovation. 3: Tables in Figures 2,3,6 & 7 created by the author's firm,, from patent data obtained using Thomson Innovation 'Themescape' tool. Note: The patent landscapes created using the Themescape software tool have no labelled axes. The Themescape tool compares words and topics and to derive a multidimensional mathematical space, and then uses mathematical algorithms to create the best conversion into the 2 dimensional topographical map. The map is divided into different 'themes' and the closer the patent documents are the more closely related their written content is. The contours on the map relate to the density of patent material and the taller the 'peak' the more patent material that is located there. There is no scale or axes for the map. All patent content is placed onto the regions using the proprietary algorithms of the Themescape software. 615