Technology Trends and Patenting Prospects of Medicinal Plants in Korea

INTRODUCTIONS

Medicinal plants, source of life-saving drugs, are used in medicine to prevent disease, maintain health, and cure sickness. Currently, eighty percent of the world’s population uses herbal medicine for some aspect of primary health care (Lu et al., 2011). The world market for medicinal plants is estimated to be $60 billion annually (Yu et al., 2018). Traditional medicinal plants have proven to be an invaluable asset in modern drug discovery and their demand is increasing in pharmaceutical, cosmetic and food industries with trends favoring products based on natural substances (Amaral and Fierro, 2013; Serafini et al., 2014).

Claims of intellectual property (IP) rights to traditional knowledge of medicinal plants have been made (Timmermans and Berg, 2003). IP is a strategic asset for economic and technology development by industries (Smith Richard et al., 2009) and governments (Choi et al., 2011). Its analysis provides the information necessary to prevent overlap among competing research efforts and misguided investment (Han, 2010).

Indices of technology levels, research trends, and international competitiveness associated with different types of patents are used in IP analysis (Yoon et al., 2012). Generally speaking, patents are the most important type of IP protection. Patent law protects new products, processes, and uses related to medicinal plants. Many existing patents are focused on the use of medicinal plants in therapies and foods (Sahoo et al., 2011). Geographical indicators identify products as having characteristics associated with their place of origin. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO, 2018) is primarily concerned with IP protection of traditional medical knowledge against unauthorized use by third parties. IP protection of traditional medical plants does not deal specifically with genetic resources, however, holders of traditional medical knowledge may fail to obtain patents because of a lack of novelty in their patent applications.

In Korea, researchers are applying modem chemical and pharmacological methods to conduct research on specific compounds extracted from medicinal plants (Kim et al., 2018; Seong et al., 2018). Oriental medicine differs from Western medicine in its basic medical orientation, physiological theories, etiologies, diagnostics, therapeutics, and pharmacology (Fang, 2003). There have been several reviews of IP prospects for oriental medicinal plants in various countries (Fang, 2003; Hsiao, 2007; Pan et al., 2011; Sahoo et al., 2011). It remains unclear, however, how patents for oriental medicinal plants could best be developed.

The study attempted to use patent indices in identifying the most promising fields for innovations based on 12 oriental medicinal plants by analyzing the patenting trends of 10 country groups.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

RESULTS

1. International patent trends for medicinal plants

Of the 4,867 effective patents selected through the verification process of the collected patents, Korea had the highest number of effective patents at 2,424 (49.8%), followed by China at 1,958 (40.2%), USA at 159 (3.2%), and Japan at 120 (2.5%). Of the 12 medicinal plants, magnolia-vine and balloon flower accounted for 71% of the total patents. The proportional representation of the five technology categories among all of the patents was 38% medicine, 32% food, 17% manufacture, 8% cosmetics, and 5% genome. China, Japan, Korea and USA accounted for 95% of the total patent applications which is largely attributable to the fact that the investigated plants are oriental medicinal plants produced and consumed mainly in Asia.

The number of patents registered per year increased until 2012 and then decreased in the latter period. The magnolia-vine and balloon flower had the highest number of registered patents in all of the periods, but recently there was an increase in the number of patents for Korean angelica (Table 1).

Table 1.

Classification of effective patents between 12 medicinal plants and 10 country groups.

2. Evaluation of technology growth

In order to evaluate the technology growth of each plant, the growth stage of technologies using IPP model based on the correlation between the number of existing patents and the number of patent applications were investigated. China and Korea are the leading countries in whole technology growth related to the 12 medicinal plants.

For example, the magnolia-vine plant is in the decline stage because the numbers of patents and applicants continually increased from the first time period to the fourth time period, but they subsequently decreased in the fifth time period [Fig. 1 (A)]. The growth pattern of the balloon flower is similarly in the decline stage [Fig. 1 (B)]. However, trend of remaining 10 plants was unclear because of fewer patents or too few applicants.

Fig. 1.

Landscape of technologies related to two medicinal plants based on the IPP model of magnolia-vine (A) and balloon flower (B). The time periods were; I (2006 - 2007), II (2008 - 2009), III (2010 - 2011), IV (2012 - 2013), and V (2014 - 2015). x-axis; number of applicants. y-axis; number of patents. The arrow direction is the time flow of periods. The circle sizes indicate the relative correlation between numbers of patents and applicants while the circle color indicates each medicinal plant.

In each country group, IPP model indicates that all country groups are at the beginning stage of technology growth except for China, Japan, Korea and USA. China is in the maturity stage of technology growth; the numbers of patents and applicants continually increased from the first time to the fourth time period and subsequently declined in the fifth time period.

The changing of patents indicates that rapid technological progress occurred between the third and fourth time periods. Korea is in the growth stage of technology growth because the numbers of patents and applicants both increased in the all of the time periods. Japan and USA are in the decline stage since the numbers of patents and applicants steadily decreased in all the time periods.

3. Potential development

In the 12 medicinal plants, IPE model indicated an increase in recent applications for cosmetics technologies, an infancy stage for genomics technologies, and continuous applications for medicine and food technologies.

For the magnolia-vine, there was an increase in applications for cosmetics technology and a decrease in applications for food and medicine technologies [Fig. 2 (A)]. On balloon flower, there was an increase in applications for genome technology and food technologies [Fig. 2 (B)]. However, the category is expected to have high potential for development due to an increase in the use of materials in natural products such as pharmaceuticals and cosmetics (Pan et al., 2011). In the other 10 plants, Tian ma and Milk vetch showed an increase in applications for food technology. The sheng di huang, Chinese liquorice, Chinese boxthorn showed an increase in applications for medicine technology.

Fig. 2.

IPE model landscape of the potential for technology development based on magnolia-vine (A) and balloon flower (B). x-axis; share ratio of patent. y-axis; increasing ratio of patent. The red line is average value of share ratio of patent (x-axis) and increasing ratio of patent (y-axis). The red line indicates the quadrants, upper right; continuous application, upper left; increase in recent applications, lower left; infancy applications, lower right; decrease in recent applications.

In the 10 country groups, IPE model was not meaningful because of small numbers of patents except in magnolia-vine and balloon flower. However, China and Korea had the greatest numbers of patents and applicants in all of the technological categories. For the magnolia-vine, China had a high growth and market share in food category while Korea had an increasing applications in the cosmetics category. For the balloon flower, China and Korea were the most active in food technology development. The other country groups had no meaningful rise in technology categories because of the small numbers of patents.

4. Technological level and competitiveness

In order to evaluate the technological level of the 12 plants, the CPP and PFS indices were used. The CPP index evaluates the quality level of technology development and technological influence while PFS index evaluates the market capability and power.

The magnolia-vine and balloon flower had a lot of core patents or original patents which together had both high level of technology and strong market capability. The other plants had an average technology level with low market capability (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.

The graph shows the distribution of technological levels and market power based on the CPP and PFS indices for the 12 medicinal plants. The magnolia-vine and balloon flower have level of technology and strong market capability. The 10 medicinal plants have an average technology level with low market capability. x-axis; patent family size (PFS), y-axis; cites per patent (CPP).

In order to evaluate the technological competitiveness of the 12 plants, the PII and the TS index were used (Table 2). The magnolia-vine and balloon flower showed increases in both indices. For the balloon flower, the TS index increased despite stagnation in the PII. This was possible since the balloon flower was more influenced by the quantitative number than the qualitative level.

Table 2.

Classification of the number of patents, patent impact index (PII), and technology strength (TS) index in two intervals for the 12 medicinal plants.

PII considers only the qualitative level of technology, whereas the TS index reflects both the qualitative level and quantitative measures. The other plants require aggressive marketing because of the average quality of the technology along with low market capability. The Sheng di huang plant had the highest PII despite its low TS index, indicating that it had the highest-quality patents among the 12 medicinal plants. The Cynanchi wilfordii radix plant had the greatest increase in TS index despite a decrease in its PII and low number of patents meaning there is a recent and rapid increase in the number of patents although there is a decrease in the level of technology.

5. Patent development strategy

In order to present a patent development strategy, a newly designed IPM model based on three factors (i.e., blank technology, entry barrier, and future growth) was used.

Our model predicted the best technology category for future patent development. For magnolia-vine, cosmetics technology was predicted as the proposed field for patent applications and medicine technology as the high-risk field for investment because of little blank technology and a high entry barrier [Fig. 4 (A)].

Fig. 4.

Radar chart of the relative Likert scale [0 (lowest) to 5 (highest)] with three technical factors (i.e., blank technology, entry barrier, and future growth). Blue circle; blank technology, Black square; future growth, Red triangle; entry barrier. (A) Evaluation of magnolia-vine based on three factors in country groups, (B) Graph plot of medicine technology category based on three factors in 12 medicinal plants.

The ordinal logistic regression analysis for magnolia-vine showed that two factors have statistically significant p - values: blank technology and entry barrier (p - value < 0.01 for each factor), although the future growth factor was not significant (p - value = 0.17). Although various technology categories are predicted the best field for patent applications, ordinal logistic regression of the three factors was not significant in other plants except magnolia-vine and balloon flower.

In the technology categories for all medicinal plants the comparison of 12 plants was not significant due to some medicinal plants having small number of patents. The best medicinal plant was screened based on each technology category using a low entry barrier with two high factors (i.e., blank technology and future growth).

Our model indicated that medicine, genome, and cosmetic categories had high possibility of growth for patent applications while food and manufacture categories had low possibility for future patent development. For medicine category, the Korean blackberry, Chinese boxthorn, and Korean angelica were predicted to be the most valuable medicinal plants while balloon flower and Chinese yam will have high risks in future patent development [Fig. 4 (B)].

DISCUSSIONS

The international patent trends for 12 medicinal plants showed that patents increased until 2012 and then continually decreased. The decrease coincided with the onset of financial crises in the USA and EU which started in 2008 and had a lingering impact on the economies of Asia. Such international crises are likely to have significant effects on various economic and industrial sectors (Kahler, 2013; Felix and Roy, 2014). However, decreasing trends of registered patents after 2016 was related to the patent rule that keeps patents closed for 18 months after registration (Yun et al., 2011).

In recent years, the production of medicinal plants increased as they have become increasingly popular as health foods and natural medicines in Asia (KOSIS, 2018). Chinese herbal medicine industry has been selected as a top growth engine and its market size is continuously growing with the help of support policies in Asia (Lin et al., 2018).

Currently, China is implementing policies to develop traditional medicines in global markets for medicinal resources (NDRC, 2016). On the other hand, Korea is attracting attention on high-value-added industrial materials that complement shortcomings in modern medicines (Kim et al., 2015).

Japan, is only focusing on the commercialization and safety of imported products since other country groups are considered to have low interest in medicinal plants due to low domestic market size (Iwase et al., 2012).

In the technological level with CPP and PFS indices, magnolia-vine and balloon flower had a lot of core patents while other plants had an average technology level with low market capability. Although the technological level has dropped, Sheng di huang and Cynanchi wilfordii radix plant increased in the number of patents. The result is consistent with the rapid increase in the demand in the Korean market and the introduction of health foods containing C. wilfordii radix in Japan (Sato-Masumoto et al., 2017). Therefore, it is assumed that the technology level of those medicinal plants will increase in the future since the number of patents associated with those plants were increasing rapidly (WIPS, 2018).

In addition, it is suggested that patent development for 10 medicinal plants is more important in acquiring many patents for consumers and marketing even though the patent has a low technology level. In the technological competitiveness with PII and the TS indices, 10 medicinal plants except magnolia-vine and balloon flower required aggressive marketing because of the average quality of the technology along with low market capability.

For the patent development strategy for each medicinal plant, IPM model predicted the developmental possibility of specific technology category. In the case of magnolia-vine, the model indicated that cosmetics technology is the best field for patent applications. The magnolia-vine continues to grow in the natural premium and multi-functional cosmetics market (Kumar, 2005).

Cosmetics field is advantageous for opening new markets because it does not require large-scale clinical trials and long-term investment (Evans, 2009). The proposed cosmetics category is similar to the increasing trends identified using the previous IPE model.

In the possibility of future patent development for all medicinal plants, three technology categories (i.e., medicine, genome, cosmetics) were predicted to have a high possibility of growth for patent applications. However, the ratio distribution of patent registration showed that the food and medicine categories were the lowest areas having low growth potential due to many existing patents.

Nevertheless, the development of patents in the medicine category is expected to increase because of the increased demand for new drug development in traditional medicinal plants.

Its, for medicine category, Korean blackberry, Chinese boxthorn, and Korean angelica were predicted to be the most valuable medicinal plants. These three plants are mainly used as functional teas in Asia with high potential for patent development because of projected increase in global tea consumption and production (FAO, 2018).

On the other hand, patent development for balloon flower and Chinese yam has a high risk. Chinese yam has a high level of patented technology despite the small numbers of patents and balloon flower had the highest level of technical competence based on the PII and the TS index. Hence, the risk associated with developing new technologies in balloon flower is high because of intense competition.

The study collected 4,867 valid patents issued from January 2006 to December 2017 for 12 oriental medicinal plants by screening the patenting trends in 10 country groups. Using various methods of IP analysis, patent indices, and multi-layer modeling, the competitiveness of technology categories for development based on oriental medicinal plants in the world market were predicted. This prediction of future trends in patent technologies can help governments and enterprises formulate research and development strategies for rapidly expanding markets. New insights were provided using a newly designed intellectual property multi-layer model based on blank technology, entry barriers, and future growth factors. The model can be used to provide the scope of particular technology fields and to increase patent holders’ competitiveness given their patent development strategy.

Acknowledgments

This work was carried out with support from the Research Program for Agricultural Science and Technology Development(PJ013485) and Cooperative Research Program for National Agricultural Genome Program(PJ013373), Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea.

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