External or Internal Cooperation? Patenting Activities and Cooperative Structures in the Chinese ICT Sector

Despite abundant studies on patent cooperation, few have carefully studied the structure and modes. Taking advantage of the patents granted by the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China from 2007 to 2017, this paper revealed the overall situation of patent cooperation, shedding light on the patent cooperation patterns of listed companies. It shows that the size of patent cooperation network in the ICT industry demonstrates a significantly increasing trend, among which, leaders in the industry have formed their own clusters, with the networks having the small-world characteristics. Moreover, four structures of patent cooperation are summarized in the paper: (1) Minimum cooperation;(2) External oriented cooperation;(3) Internal oriented cooperation;(4) Compound cooperation.