key: cord-1043605-bst4xb3y
authors: Falciola, Luca; Barbieri, Massimo
title: Searching and analyzing patent-relevant Covid-19 information
date: 2022-01-20
journal: World Patent Information
DOI: 10.1016/j.wpi.2022.102094
sha: 0a4166af6037b26bbd252ddfddac1972a4a2a283
doc_id: 1043605
cord_uid: bst4xb3y

The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted several institutions to offer free, dedicated websites and tools to foster research and access to urgently needed innovation by facilitating the search and analysis of information within the large amount of scientific and patent literature which was published in a very short period of time. This situation is clearly exceptional and challenging for patent information professionals searching for relevant disclosures at a given date in a reliable manner. This article provides an overview of search criteria and strategies, main databases and websites, number of publications, biological sequence information and experimental data sets covering Covid-19 findings within scientific and patent literature disclosed between January and August 2020. The analysis of non-patent literature has been focused on the identification, date assignment, disambiguation, and access to experimental data. The analysis of patent literature has been focused on the trends found within the earliest filed and published patent documents in representative jurisdictions worldwide. Some practical advice and strategies for technical, medical, or patentability assessment of Covid-19-related innovations across different information formats and resources are proposed.

Beyond the human tragedy, the Covid-19 emergency has required most communities and economic sectors worldwide to pursue their activities in an unprecedented and unpredictable environment.

Compared to infectious diseases during the last few decades, the Covid-19 pandemic combines many of their features (such as geographic distribution and transmissibility) but has an impact amplified by imbalances and weaknesses of global ecosystems [1] . The public and private research institutions are called to very quickly adapt their governance and priorities to support innovation, strengthening collaboration efforts to overcome this "Research and Development gap" [2] . The Covid-19 crisis is also impacting R&D budgets and priorities for financing innovation, pushing for major and structural changes in both high technology and traditional sectors, affecting work life and everyday activities.

Patenting activities contribute to the dissemination of novel technical solutions and products, and of innovation in general. The COVID-19 emergency affected activities of patent offices and the overall "patent industry", in parallel to the legislative and regulatory frameworks, as summarized by World

Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in a dedicated webpage [3] or by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in a working paper about the national patent-related policies in WTO Member states during COVID-19 pandemic [4] . Patent offices, courts, governments and health authorities may decide to enact specific country-specific policies applicable to patent rights, in particular by taking into account both financial and human rights issues related to the pandemic and its consequences that push for far more exceptions to legal and commercial policies than those generally applied, with at least partially conflicting attitudes towards open access to methods, drugs, and equipment [5, 6] .

Since the official declaration of the Covid-19 global outbreak, many publishers and institutions have made several tools available for extracting and aggregating potentially relevant information from This article intends to provide patent information professionals with an overview of criteria, data, and sources useful to Covid-19 searches as made available until November 2020. Moreover, an analysis of major sources of patent and scientific information (including biological sequences and datasets for Groups (when available), relevant dates by month (earliest priority, publication, and grant), range in the number of days between earliest priority date and publication and/or grant date (in 15-day intervals), and technological field (as identified on the basis of available IPC Subclasses, IPC Groups and/or title). This xlsx file was used to generate Tables 4-6 and Figures 5-7) .

The details of biological sequences and databases cited in Section 5 are listed in Supplementary File 5

Additional details are provided in the text commenting on the tables and figures.

Profiling Covid-19 Scientific Literature and Data as Published in Jan.-Aug. 2020

A review of the main webpages or portals dedicated to the Covid-19 scientific literature has been performed, consolidating the URLs in Supplementary File 1. The contents of such databases have been compared ( Figure 2 ) to highlight those providing access to the largest repository of documentation that is selected as being relevant for Covid-19. These documents are mostly regular scientific articles and books but, in many cases, other types of disclosures are also included: preprints, news, reports on clinical activities, experimental datasets, and other electronic-only disclosures. These absolute figures regarding the size of these databases should not be used to rank such resources accordingly, as many other criteria should also be taken into consideration including the coverage (i.e., any coronavirus research or data published even before 2020, or focused only on Covid-19 findings in 2020); the list of keywords and other selection criteria that have been used to establish the database; the available features for searching for and extracting either specific information or full text documents; the frequency of updates, or the reliability in checking for duplicates, format, or completeness of contents.

A major challenge for the patent examination and evaluation may come from the many, possibly conflicting sources about the content and date of disclosure of Covid-19 information. As a preliminary step, patent information specialists should verify which scientific keywords are the most appropriate to search for Covid-19 disclosures in scientific or patent literature. Similarly to previous situations where a novel entity of major scientific importance is identified and, therefore, competition for establishing some kind of primacy or leadership starts among investigators, the process of naming Covid-19 biological and medical concepts to be consistently and univocally used in literature and databases (and thus also to be used for future searches) has not been linear or fully standardized. Until 

A detailed bibliometric analysis of the Covid-19 scientific literature is not an objective of this article.

Some articles have been published throughout 2020 in which detailed analyses of scientific production have been pursued using various criteria and visualization approaches for selecting databases and sources, selecting and combining search criteria, categorizing and linking publications, focusing on the production of specific countries, institutions or authors [13] [14] [15] . A good starting point to evaluate which publication or indexing details are relevant when examining a publication before or after a given date is the PubMed database in the NCBI website, the most popular free database for biomedical nonpatent literature that indexes publications with Medical Sub-Heading (MeSH) system and that has been updated in 2020, independently from Covid-19 crisis, with a new layout and some new features [16] .

The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted not only the introduction of two distinct Supplementary

Concepts in PubMed MeSH system ("severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2" and "Covid-19"; [17] ) but also to change own policies for including preprints [18] for rapid identification and assessment of scientific publications, whatever names and keywords authors have used.

A previous paper [19] Other discrepancies were observed with respect to one of the first articles about Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting the potential for international spread via commercial air travel of a "pneumonia of unknown aetiology", indicated in PubMed as having its earliest date on Jan. 17th, 2020 [22] when the journal website indicates the publication on Jan. 14th, 2020 [23] . These observations confirm how it is important to carefully verify the official publication date of search results in PubMed, given the variable discrepancy or delay (from a few days up to several months) between such date and the other date information for a given article in this database, potentially impacting both actual searchability of articles within PubMed and the conclusions about applicable prior art for evaluating patentability.

The relevance of observations made for Covid-19 publications in PubMed, in the period between Jan. difficult. It should also be highlighted that preprints, or even publications that were made hastily available through websites and databases without a proper peer-and publishing review, may later on be republished with modifications, or even retracted, as already indicated in a specific webpage [29] .

A further uncertainty remains about whether and how these datasets will be maintained in the future to allow patent information specialists to evaluate prior evidence correctly with respect to current legal standards. This situation may evolve in the future towards a more structured and integrated way of making available scientific publications. These events further justify specific attention when searching for, re-extracting, or maybe even saving copies of all relevant Covid-19

information as available at a given date, if to be considered at a later time during the patent proceedings or legal challenges. For instance, the notice of concurrent patent filings or license may be mentioned within the dedicated section of the text for a number of Covid-19 articles published in journals that oblige authors to notify potential conflict-of-interest or financial matters related to the content of article. This information of potential patent or business relevance is irregularly, or not at all, indexed in PubMed using a specific search field (Conflict of Interest Statements) and thus it is hardly searchable and quantifiable without a detailed article-by-article analysis [30].

Additional resources for Covid-19 information beyond scientific literature databases may be important to identify details relevant to expand the search criteria and provide patent information users with more complete reports. This consideration applies to requests for searches that are related not only to getting a more global coverage of a specific product or technology but also to the origin or J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f confirmation of statements about Covid-19 found in social or general media that may have received more or less deserved attention.

A first example of such resources are dedicated websites of journals with a structured and commentedon selection of Covid-19 medical and scientific news reports, where further details relevant to patentrelated topics may be found for products and technologies that investigators and entities may disclose in parallel or even before the actual scientific publication. Major scientific publishers such as Science A third example is experimental data that authors cite in a publication but are not fully reported in the corresponding official PDF file as searchable full text, tables, or graphics of the document. This definition covers multimedia contents (for example, videos or audio descriptions of protocols) and functional and structural information over chemical or biological compounds, often including information related to experimental values as measured over a number of samples, (such as inhibitory, stimulatory, or antiviral activity) or in a human population (such as clinical or epidemiological data).

Biological sequences or chemical coordinates are also available in well-established, dedicated J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f databases that are freely accessible worldwide and allocate unique accession numbers to the molecules and data that is deposited for each molecule. Investigators can use this indexing in their publications and for performing searches for specific entries by applying text, sequence, and/or chemical criteria (further details are provided in Section 5 below).

Such data may be provided by the authors by means of either links in the corresponding webpage of the publication or to a stand-alone file within a dedicated public repository. These types of disclosures are generally briefly cited in the official text of the article as supporting information, supplementary materials, or otherwise, and made available to readers for further analysis as links to web-only material in various formats (PDF or Word files, csv/xlsx Excel-compatible files, txt or xml files, or other data-specific formats that may be not easily used).

The experimental data or other files associated with a publication within an article may be extracted and compared only by reviewing the webpage of the article. At most, only specific databases, such as PubMed or PMC have an "associated data" filter that would allow searchers to identify relevant articles [44] , but this search feature does not guarantee that all articles with additional files will be actually 

Extracting and Comparing Covid-19 Patent Literature as Published in Jan.-Aug. 2020

Since the official announcement of the Covid-19 outbreak in Feb. 2020, patent offices have started a J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f series of initiatives to support applicants and general users of patent system, with the formalities, the payments, the filing and the examination of patent applications, as well as other proceedings usually performed at patent offices, such as the extension (automatic or requested by the applicant) of some deadlines or improvements in internet services that allow perform actions from remote locations. The

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has started providing patent information users at large (investigators, companies, policymakers) with information collected from patent offices worldwide, reports, and specific tools. Together with the COVID-19 IP Policy Tracker [47] , the WIPO website also provides users with a glossary containing key concepts related to the technologies applicable to Covid-19 in English and nine other languages [48] and a dedicated COVID-19 Search facility within their own patent search tool Patentscope [49] . Similar initiative taken by WIPO as well as other patent offices have been reported in World Patent Information [50] and reviewed in this

Section together with other patent information tools identified by authors in the websites of patent offices in the webpages listed in Table 3 .

These webpages and the quick description that is provided are clearly not exhaustive, but some general observations can be made, also in view of the benchmarking made in a presentation at EPOPIC 2020 [51] . It should be noted that the two major patent offices -the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) -have preferred (at least until end November 2020) not to establish any specific search facilities on their websites, preferring to concentrate on a series of procedures and programs providing support to inventors and patent applicants as indicated in a joint statement issued in June 2020 [52] . These patent offices have

proposed compiling a database of patent licensing data, as the one accessible through the USPTO's [54, 55] , antiviral strategies involving small molecules and biologics [56] [57] [58] [59] , natural compounds or traditional medicine products with anti-viral properties [60, 61] , or suitable nanotechnologies [62] .

It is not easy, when comparing the features and outcomes of the search strategies proposed in these publications (where available) or in the free patent information facilities listed above, to evaluate which are most interesting for future searches. However, it seems interesting to consolidate the search strategies that were explicitly disclosed and meant to be applied by users in the same websites

proposing them, such as those present in the WIPO, EPO, and The Lens websites between Feb. and Nov. 

A first level of analysis of the Early Covid-19 Patent Dataset is made with respect to jurisdictions and types of documents filed in such jurisdictions (Table 4) countries like Germany, Israel, Brazil, or Spain show some limited interest in achieving earlier patent protection even at a national level, sometimes with preference for utility models. This data seems to indicate a general preference for making use of national rather than international authorities to accelerate the patent proceedings but with major differences across countries. In China, according to a study of listed Chinese companies [66] , the applicants appear engaged in a kind of "patent race", but other considerations may then affect the preference of domestic applicants with respect to the patent examination and renewal process [67] . Non-Chinese companies, in contrast, could expect to be disadvantaged by "technology protection", as a study would suggest [68] . In any case, the Chinese Patent Office provided an unusual visibility to applicants that obtain an early patent grant, as shown in the press release about a COVID-19 vaccine [69] .

A second level of analysis in the Early Covid-19 Patent Dataset is made with respect to the type of patent documents, in general and by earlier filing or publication date ( Figure 5) . The data show a strong preference for standard patent proceedings but as indicated above, the preference for utility models or provisional patent applications is clear in specific countries. When these data are analyzed by the month indicated as the earliest priority date (or initial filing) and the publication date between Jan. and Aug. 2020, the earliest patent filing date found was in mid-January, with the earliest publication dates in March 2020. The global trend of the two dates is fairly predictable, with an increase of publications over the selected period of time and the peak filings in March 2020 which follow the same pattern as the number of months between initial filing and publication (on average slightly higher than 3 months). However, a burst of filings appeared, especially those of provisional patent applications and utility models filed between February and April 2020. Since May 2020, the number of already published patent filings reached a kind of plateau, if not decreased but it can be expected when taking into account that, for example, provisional patent applications have a statutory, public notification of less than two months from filing).

A third type of analysis in the Early Covid-19 Patent Dataset was carried out with respect to the technological domains where early patent filings and publications were pursued ( Figure 6 ). Patent Dataset may be defined on the basis of the above mentioned four technological domains and filing trends (Figure 7) . As expected, a majority of patent documents in the Early Covid-19 Patent

Dataset are associated with either diagnostic or therapeutic uses, with an even higher preference for Therapeutic Technologies among provisional patent applications. However, the distribution according to the days between the filing and publication month suggest that, independently from the filing month (only a limited difference was observed among the technologies was observed according to this criteria), those assigned to Cleaning or Protection Technology were often published earlier (at least 70% were published less than three months from filing) than those for Diagnostic or Therapeutic

Technologies (at least 70% were published between two and four months), aligning more to the trend of patent applications. Regarding the distribution and prevalence of the IPC Groups described above, often only later, more in-depth searches in the patent literature explain and confirm these initial observations about prevalence or preference of choices made by applicants about filing and disclosing patent applications in connection to Covid-19.

The access and searchability of biological sequences and chemical structures within scientific and patent literature is facilitated by the dedicated databases established by many organizations and their specific policies for managing such information. In particular, two research institutions, NCBI (National Centre for Biotechnology Institutions, USA) and EBI (European Biotechnology Institute, UK), should be mentioned since they have made a major effort to aggregate and offer a structured access to biological and chemical data about SARS-CoV-2 biology in various formats. Main Covid-19 resources in NCBI and EBI websites are summarized in Table 7 . A repository of raw, primary functional data available through NCBI is associated with NCATS (National Centre for Advancing Translational Science) which organizes its own screening and biological data into four main sections, as described in a related publication [71] . A further NIH Covid-19 dedicated webpage summarizes its own and external resources for data under separate, searchable sections. EBI has announced a series of initiatives about providing timely information on SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 research, the main Covid-19 resources being grouped in a separate portal [72] that is intended also to facilitate data submission,

sharing, and analysis from external users.

Among these data, those related to biological properties of small organic molecules that may be validated as Covid-19 candidate therapeutic compounds are also of particular interest for patenting J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f analysis. In this domain, the NCBI and EBI databases that cover chemical compounds of biological interest (PubChem [73] and ChEMBL [74] , respectively) present chemical and experimental data about potential SARS-CoV-2 activities of specifically indexed compounds listed therein. It is not easy to list, let alone to compare, similar websites or dedicated sections in terms of origin, amount, and overall quality of their content. It is equally difficult to evaluate how many publications, and possibly patent applications already filed, may have exploited evidence found in these repositories.

A separate analysis should be dedicated to the search and analysis of biological sequences (i.e., nucleic acids and proteins). The NCBI and EBI portals usually covering this type of information have established some specific webpages and other resources for the analysis of newly identified SARS-CoV-2 sequence data, such as in COVID-19 UniProtKB [75] or Ensembl COVID-19 [76] for protein and nucleic acid sequences, respectively. These websites and resources in other websites may also cover and compare nucleic acids or proteins of previously identified Coronaviruses (being potentially relevant for present SARS-CoV-2 patent and research activities), often together with those human sequences that interact with SARS-CoV-2 or are somehow involved in SARS-CoV-2 biology or pathology. Two further tools of interest are those available in the "Human Coronaviruses Data

Initiative" portal in Lens.org [77] , using their own PatSeq Finder search tool to extract prior

Coronavirus-related sequences that are described in the patent literature (as of May 2020), as well as a database established at Oxford University and named CoV-AbDab dedicated to antibodies recognizing SARS-CoV-2 proteins [78] .

A deeper analysis of these resources and information is beyond the scope of this article but patent information professionals should be aware that, as in many other biomedical domains, for SARS-CoV-2 there is also a wide number of codes, names, and representations with respect to the same biological sequence that may be found in different databases or publications. A main example is represented by proteins that are encoded by SARS-CoV-2 genome whose RNA sequence was first released on Jan. 10 th , 2020 [79] but then integrated on the basis of several findings accumulated since then by analyzing clinical samples worldwide. The details of SARS-CoV-2 biology, genomic variability, and candidate targets for therapeutic intervention are reviewed [80, 81] . J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f

This paper was drafted during the fourth quarter of 2020 and does not (and cannot) list and analyze, all the relevant websites and data sources in this ever-changing landscape but our findings suggest some considerations about future searches and analysis of patent information. The searches and the websites listed as reference in the text or in Tables, together with the cited references, can be used to select patent-related publications and events to be compared with the sequence of major Covid-19 medical and scientific events, showing how the situation quickly evolved just before the declaration of the Covid-19 pandemic, and for the first 6 months following (Figure 9 ).

The quantitative and qualitative analysis of information made by this report, as of November 2020, is not able to predict any future findings in patent literature released after the statutory delay for patent publication (18 months from an earlier, priority date, in general), nor conclude (somehow more important) whether or how valuable "Covid-19 specific" datasets and documentary repositories will be still available in the future for patent-related analysis. Already during the preparation and the revision of this article, the contents of quite a number of websites dedicated to Covid-19 research have been aggregated, ceased to be regularly updated, or have simply disappeared already. Given the increasing amount of information daily, there is no guarantee that all providers will continue to allocate the time and resources required to keep the databases updated and accessible, thus potentially leading to confusion regarding future technical or patentability assessments. In fact, it has been observed that possibly hundreds of online-only, open-access journals may have already vanished [86] .

Such issues related to stability and availability of scientific publications may affect the prior art evaluation process, and in particular for biomedical inventions, where non-patent literature is often predominant over patent literature as relevant prior art [87, 88] .

It should also be noticed that, lacking any specific treatment for Covid-19 during the first months after the pandemic outbreak, the only immediately available option was to face the emergency by exploiting possibly incomplete, novel Covid-19 findings when testing equipment and drugs already commercially available (or otherwise known from virologic or respiratory clinical research). This approach is generally been defined as "Drug Repurposing", but in the present case it may lead to a potential "tsunami" of such projects based on serendipitous observations or more systematic, large scale analysis of candidate compounds [89] . Patentability of findings about known materials, compounds, or other products used to fight against Covid-19 may then be challenged by means of open access preprint repositories or by other approaches summarized in a report published by WIPO Magazine [90] . Indeed, the impact of the flood of non-patent literature and data freely available during 2020 still has to be assessed for the patentability of novel biological or chemical entities that will be claimed in patent applications filed and published from mid-2020 onwards, after pursuing more "normal" and J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f lengthy drug discovery programs.

Another important aspect is how the "frontrunners" having not only filed patent applications earlier but also having had their publications, examinations, and even grants accelerated, will be provided with fully enforceable patent rights. Aside from the pressure of public opinion and governments J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 

Group (1) Highly specific for Covid-19 "covid-19" OR "covid 19" OR "covid19" "SARS-CoV-2" OR "SARS-CoV2" OR "sarscov2" "2019 ncov" OR "2019-nCoV" OR "2019nCoV" "covid-2019" OR "covid 2019" OR "COVID2019" "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2" "2019 novel coronavirus" OR "coronavirus disease 2019" "novel corona virus" OR "novel coronavirus" OR "new corona virus" OR "new coronavirus" "Wuhan coronavirus"

Less specific for Covid-19 (potential applicable to coronavirus research in general, potential typos, or ambiguous wording) "Alternative phrasing" "SARS-Coronavirus-2" OR "severe acute respiratory syndrome 2" OR "severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2" OR "coronavirus disease-19" OR "coronavirus 19" OR "coronavirus 2019" OR "coronavirus disease-2019" OR "coronavirus-2" OR "coronavirus 2" OR coronavirus2 "Location phrasing" (wuhan OR hubei OR huanan) AND ("severe acute respiratory" OR outbreak OR betacoronavir* OR coronavir* OR virus OR "Middle east respiratory" OR SARS OR MERS) "Alternative acronyms" "novel cov" OR "ncov-2019" OR "ncov-19" OR "ncov" OR "cov 2" OR CoV2 OR "MERS-COV" OR SARS2 OR "sars-cov" OR Covid "General Coronavirus" Betacoronavir* OR coronavir* OR "Corona virus" OR "corona viruses" J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Granted Patents (44) Provisional Patent Applications (94) Utility Models (55) Innovation Patents (15) J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 

Emerging Pandemic Diseases: How We Got to COVID-19

Preparedness needs research: How fundamental science and international collaboration accelerated the response to COVID-19

WIPO's COVID-19 Response

Patent-related actions taken in WTO members in response to Covid-19 pandemic

Pharmaceutical patents: reconciling the human right to health with the incentive to invent

Crisis-Critical Intellectual Property: Findings from the COVID-19 Pandemic. Centre for Technology Management Working Paper Series

Naming the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and the virus that causes it

MeSH [Supplementary Concept] severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2

Resources relating to COVID-19

Search request: Systematic literature review on COVID-19

Characteristics of academic publications, preprints, and registered clinical trials on the COVID-19 pandemic

Data mining and analysis of scientific research data records on Covid-19 mortality, immunity, and vaccine development -In the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic

How scientific research reacts to international public health emergencies: a global analysis of response patterns

PubMed 2.0

NLM. New MeSH Supplementary Concept Record for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus

(see update about "COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 MeSH Terms-2021

NLM. NLM Announces NIH Preprint Pilot to Provide Early Access to COVID-19 Research

Searching PubMed during the COVID-19 pandemic

Managing Cancer Care during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

LitCovid: an open database of COVID-19 literature

Pneumonia of unknown aetiology in Wuhan, China: potential for international spread via commercial air travel

Pneumonia of unknown aetiology in Wuhan, China: potential for international spread via commercial air travel

The Lens, 2020. COVID-19 data set

Thacker Library Branches, 2020. Covid-19 Research Articles Database

Milken Institute Covid-19 Treatment and Vaccine Tracker

Repositioning of 8565 Existing Drugs for COVID

CORD-19: The Covid-19 Open Research Dataset

WIPO, 2020. COVID-19 IP Policy Tracker

WIPO, 2020. Patentscope COVID-19 INDEX

Intellectual Property information in the time of corona virus

Fighting coronavirus -background to the EPO's response

Joint Message from the USPTO and the JPO

COVID-19) treatment: a patent review

Coronaviruses: A patent dataset report for research and development (R&D) analysis. Data in Brief

Research and Development on Therapeutic Agents and Vaccines for COVID-19 and Related Human Coronavirus Diseases

Potential Therapeutic Agents and Associated Bioassay Data for COVID-19 and Related Human Coronavirus Infections

Recent patents related to vaccines and methods of treatment of coronaviruses

A Case Study: Analysis of Patents of Coronaviruses and Covid-19 for Technology Assessment and Future Research

Screening for natural and derived bio-active compounds in preclinical and clinical studies: One of the frontlines of fighting the coronaviruses pandemic

Analysis of traditional Chinese medicine from patent information sharing platform of coronavirus disease

Nanotechnology Responses to COVID-19

Study and comparison of the unique selling propositions (USPs) of free-touse multinational patent search systems

EPO, 2020. Fighting coronavirus

WIPO, 2020. Types of Protection Available via the PCT in PCT Contracting States

Spatiotemporal dynamics of the patent race: empirical evidence from listed companies in China

Obtaining certainty vs. creating uncertainty: Does firms' patent filing strategy work as expected?

Technology Protectionism and the Patent System: Strategic Technologies in China

CNIPA (China National Intellectual Property Administration), 2020. Vaccine Against Coronavirus Is Granted

Development and Clinical Application of Phosphorus-Containing Drugs Med Drug Discov

An OpenData portal to share COVID-19 drug repurposing data in real time

The COVID-19 Data Portal

PubChem in 2021: new data content and improved web interfaces

ChEMBL_27 SARS-CoV-2 release

COVID-19 UniProtKB

EBI, 2020. Ensembl COVID-19

Human Coronaviruses Data Initiative

CoV-AbDab: the Coronavirus Antibody Database

The COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comprehensive Review of Taxonomy

Genomics functional analysis and drug screening of SARS-CoV-2

SARS-CoV-2 variants, working definitions and actions taken

The coding capacity of SARS-CoV-2

SARS-CoV-2 Disrupts Splicing, Translation, and Protein Trafficking to Suppress Host Defenses

Molecular Architecture of the SARS-CoV-2 Virus

Dozens of scientific journals have vanished from the internet, and no one preserved them

An analysis of the evolution of science-technology linkage in biomedicine

Mapping the global influence of published research on industry and innovation

COVID-19 and the Drug Repurposing Tsunami. Assay and Drug Development Technologies

Drug Repurposing and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Pneumonia of unknown cause

Apr. for Cancer PubMed entries for Covid-19

Group (1) or MeSH criteria, combined with Cancer Entry Month in Pubmed

Publication of first published WO patent appl. mentioning Covid-19/SARS-CoV-2 EP patent appl. mentioning Covid-19/SARS-CoV-2 "Fighting CoronaVirus" webpage in EPO portal with Covid-19/SARS-CoV-2 search strategies

Chinese authorities declare having isolated a new coronavirus "2019-ncov" from a patient , ,"SARS-CoV-2" and "COVID-19" are announced as the official name of new virus and disease