Sustainable technology innovation path recognition: An evaluation of patent risk of international trade

Patent protection is a critical aspect of sustainable technology innovation, which is currently facing the challenge of patent risk. This study aimed to help enterprises prevent and avoid patent risk in a global view of technology innovation, and to propose a systematic evaluation model for patent risk. By combining the entropy method with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), this study constructed an analytic hierarchy model of patent risk. Some indexes in the model were selected based on the summary of prior literature, and other indexes were selected according to experts' communication, which helped us to generalize the patent risk as comprehensively as possible. The AHP evaluation results determined the weight and relative materiality for each risk factor, which were contained in a criteria layer and a sub-criteria layer. The entropy method integrated the evaluation weights of different experts' opinions. By dividing the risk factors into three categories, namely "high", "medium", or "low", according to the priority degree, the risk priority ranking was obtained. Suggestions are discussed regarding support for enterprises in dealing with patent risk that may occur during international trade or other commercial activities.