A Study of the Technology Development of 3D Computer Graphics Based on Patent Analysis

Using the patents related to the 3D computer graphics as the target of statistical analysis, this Paper presents a study for the current situation and development of the technical field. From the growth of all the statistically counting numbers from the patent, including applying patents, assignees that possessed the patents, and countries to which the assignees were belonged, this field was possibly going toward its stage of technological mature. Moreover, we can find that the United States and Japan are the two countries dominating the field and those are also the pioneers in the technical development. The patents are usually possessed by gigantic companies, which originally came from the United States and Japan but nowadays had a global distribution. The analytical result demonstrates that most of the key inventors were working for these gigantic companies. Furthermore, collaboration by teamwork has been the mainstream of working models in the process of technical development in the field. Finally, in this study we also identified several competitive technology items in the field from the patents.