Application of Citation Relationship and Co-word Method on Patent Analysis of Cloud PaaS

Cloud computing is generally considered to be beneficial for the public and private IT organizations because it can substantially reduce the cost of IT systems. Cloud computing technology is not only very important for the development of businesses but also has significant impact on the overall competitiveness of a country. However, there are few patent analyses in this area and many gaps are still open. This research retrieves the mainstream PaaS patents by taking the citing and cited patents into account. Next, we propose co-word analysis, incorporating with the visual methods of social network analysis (SNA), to investigate the R&D themes of PaaS cloud patents. The proposed method for exploring the intellectual structure, as well as the analyzed results for unveiling the development status of cloud computing, can provide valuable references for cloud-related companies to make their R&D management strategy.