The first task was to find the relevant U.S. granted patents, and EP granted patents or published patent applications. This was done for all patents published in years 1975 to 2005. This range of years is more than sufficient; but almost all of the action has taken place in the last ten years or even considerably lesser time in some categories.
Identified patents in RFID-base supply chain applications category using a patent search filter. Filter development and testing isusually the most difficult and time-consuming part of a patent analysis, and that was certainly not the case in this research.
usually the most difficult and time-consuming part of a patent analysis, and that was certainly not the case in this research. Patent search filters are sometimes relatively simple, but more often complex. Combinations of patent invention art classifications and keywords in titles, abstracts and claims were targeted for search. Because I was working with a combination of US and EP documents, I used classifications based on the International Patent Classification (IPC) system.
Details on the approach of search is given in search strategy. Since the scope of project is limited to test, therefore only 30 patent records were selected for quantitative analysis and 15 for qualitative analysis.