Patents' sustainability and patent system in engineering education: A framework and potential research gaps

Many organizations over the world considers patent analysis as a useful tool in identifying and acquiring new technologies, understanding the relation between different technologies in order to maximize their profit, evaluating patents' values, monitoring their competitors, managing their R&D portfolio, managing their human resources, licensing in-out technologies, and indicating which firms are about to enter or leave a technology. The objective of this paper is to bring the attention of educational institutions, faculty members, undergraduate students, and the researchers to the importance of the areas of patents and patenting process in engineering education. Review the used patent analysis and patent technology indicators and its applications to identify the potential research gaps. Explain the most recent developments in the patents' offices criteria, patenting principles, investigate sustainability role in the patenting process or patents analysis, and then propose a framework to incorporate sustainability criteria in the patenting process, and patent analysis processes. During this literature review, and after excluding all irrelevant publications, 53 publications reviewed in this paper for the period from 1987 to 2017. Patent system, patent analysis, patent technology indicators, and patenting process topics found to be one of the important and viable information sources, which should be an integral part in undergraduate and postgraduate educational strategic and curriculums' plans. Potential research gaps identified and future work suggested. Authors in this paper proposed a framework to incorporate sustainability concept in the patenting process, and the patent analysis. The proposed framework argue that sustainability criteria should be incorporated simultaneously in the patenting process during patent's application processing along with patenting policies. Moreover, same criteria should be considered during patent analysis. The main limitation of this work that it is provide a strategic view framework. Therefore, future research directions should be focused to derive the right operational methods/models for sustainability criteria incorporation in the patents applications evaluation as well as patent analysis techniques.