Intellectual property and patent prospecting as a basis for knowledge and innovation – a study on mobile information technologies and virtual processes of communication and management

Information and knowledge are essential drivers of innovations, technological development, and transformations that foster organizations’ competitiveness and constantly change the way people communicate, interact, and work. To hold information and knowledge means the possibility of expanding capacities and ensuring access to opportunities that may bring competitive advantage and economic growth. Considering these assumptions, the purpose of this study was to demonstrate how inventive actions can be collected and correlated as a source of information and knowledge for a given subject. In order to do so, we established as research elements the following topics: mobile information technologies, mobile communication, and management, and we looked for them, in a correlated way, in patent databases. This is a descriptive qualitative study, with secondary data collection in patent bases such as the websites Espacenet.com, Wipo.com and Patent2Net, which provide information on patents’ registrations. We used the Gephi software for analysis and visualization of network structures. Through the use of specific filters, considering the three topics together, the results showed 213 patents filed in the period 1988–2015, and a concentration of records between 2012 and 2013, when 32% of them were registered. In addition, China was responsible for 40% of patent applications, followed by South Korea, with 24%, and the United States and Japan, both with nearly 11% of the total.