The intellectual property enabling gigafactory battery cell production: an in-depth analysis of international patenting trends

Driven by the increasing demand for energy storage solutions in various applications, including electric vehicles and renewable energy systems, the lithium-ion battery (LIB) industry has experienced a remarkable surge in growth and innovation in the last decades. This growth has triggered a debate on the strategic use of both implicit and explicit knowledge in the LIB sector. The integration of specialized Know-How and innovative intellectual property (IP) shows the potential to accelerate development, simplify production processes and reduce costs. Data science methods enable the evaluation of a variety of processes and their associated costs in numerous technology areas. Although multiple data science approaches have been applied on LIBs, there has been insufficient focus on linking the implicit and the explicit knowledge of the individual production steps throughout the battery production value chain …