Muchiu (Henry) Chang, PhD Cantab.4670 Empire Crescent, Mississauga, ON, Canada L5R 1M7

+1-416-828-5676 henry.chang212@gmail.com

1. Introduction

During our work with the project of “Peel's Labour Market Survey” of the Region of Peel, Ontario, Canada in 2009, we were asked to find the top 20 companies in Toronto that will be likely to hire highly educated immigrants, who accounted for 25% of Peel's population and suffered from high unemployment rate. By considering the fact that the value of highly educated people is on their knowledge and experience to bring in innovative solution, we assumed that companies with patents will need highly educated people to innovate. Since the United States is the largest market in the world and the largest trade partner of Canada, the US patent holding may indicate the sustainable US market competitive advantages of companies that are worthwhile to approach, and will need highly educated people to keep competitive in the US market. Thus, we searched the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) patent database and found the twenty companies in Toronto as the potential employers, by the number of their US patents.

After this project, we extended this name list of twenty US patent holders into a weekly updated database of the US patent holders in all business sectors and in all Canadian cities from coast to coast. In 2010, the Region of Peel gave us the opportunity to use this database to conduct an experimental project, which was to match the highly educated immigrant with the potential employers by patent scheme. With the cooperation of nine highly educated and unemployed immigrants from social benefit recipients, six of them having a bachelor degree, two with a PhD degree and one with a master degree, we worked out a patent based employment match model and proved that this model does provide the highly educated immigrants with new and useful information about the potential employers and the job market trends in Peel. In addition to employment issue, in 2011, we built the Peel's US patent landscape to demonstrate the regional economic potential to the Peel's government bond investors and the Standard & Poors credit rating agency.

The Region of Peel sponsored us to present the successful applications of our patent model at the Region of Peel at the 14th National Metropolis Conference in Toronto in 2012, as in Figure 1. Since patent scheme is internationally standardized, we believe this can be used as an international talent match, as well as an evidence to support corporate strategic decision making in the global market.

Figure 1, Applications of our patent model at the Region of Peel

Muchiu (Henry) Chang @ 14th National Metropolis Conference, Toronto, Canada

Muchiu (Henry) Chang, PhD Cantab.4670 Empire Crescent, Mississauga, ON, Canada L5R 1M7

+1-416-828-5676 henry.chang212@gmail.com

2. Approach

Through one-on-one interview, we explore the right keywords from the patent scheme that best represent the job seeker's expertise; then by using those keywords to search the companies, that have patents classified by these keywords, as the potential employers. From the employers' point of view, patent intelligence can help companies accurately define hiring needs according to corporate strategic development plan. Meanwhile, patent holding in a geographical area may indicate the economic prosperity of that area and its job market trend, as in our work at the Region of Peel.

3. Our database of the US patent holders in Canada, China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan

In order to study the US patent holding by geographical area, we built a unique database of the US patent holders in Canada. Later, by taking into account the fact that China is the second largest economic entity in the world, we extended the scope of our database to include the US patent holders in China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and made it into a cross-Pacific patent competitive intelligence repository for decision making support in global strategic issues such as employment match, job market trends, corporate development planning, merger/acquisition evaluation, business to business partnership building, etc. Its uniqueness is shown in Table 1.

Table 1, Comparison between the features of our database with the main stream patent databases in the market

4. Conclusion

Intelligence is vital to competition, while market intelligence providing is a promising sector. Our database can provide valuable information about competitive advantages by US patent holding in geographical area in today's global market competition. Chinese search ability on the Chinese held US patents is more convenient to study Chinese companies' advantages in the US market and seek business-to-business partnership from Chinese market. Therefore, we would like to seek your support to make our research a business of patent competitive intelligence source for employment, economic development planning and consulting.

Cost of use charged free of charge charged charged

Yes No No No

No No No No

Our database of the US patent holders in Canada, China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan

USPTO Patent database

Bloomberg patent database

Thomson Reuters patent database

Google Patent

free of charge

Search by US patent holders' location in English

Yes, but incomplete

Search by US patent holders' location in Chinese

Yes(Only for the US patent holders in Chinese territories)