Trends in 3-D printing from a patent information analysis (APA)

3-D printing, with all its wide range of applications is important not only on the point of view of its R&D, but also in the real economy since various companies already use this process to produce various products available on the market. This presentation use the automatic patent analysis (APA) to give to the reader a wide spectrum of the stakeholders in that field as well as the technological trend and the application domains. This paper will also demonstrate the interest to use the APA in other R&D domains. A special attention will be taken to the universities and institutes engaged in the field of 3-D printing, because this is one of the faster ways to move from patents to the upstream fundamental research.