Research data for “Circularity in Aluminium Beverage Cans: A Patent Landscape of Technological Routes and Technical Interfaces”

Description

This dataset supports the manuscript “Circularity in Aluminium Beverage Cans: A Patent Landscape of Technological Routes and Technical Interfaces”. It contains the coded analytical dataset of 300 patent families, including representative publication, earliest priority date and jurisdiction, standardized applicant, available IPC/CPC classifications, analytical scope, documentary evidence strength, technological routes R1–R3, and verified technical interfaces. The supplementary files document the search strategy, coding protocol, paired classifications, and validation procedures.

Steps to reproduce

The dataset was produced through a structured patent-landscape procedure. Patent records related to aluminum beverage cans were retrieved from Orbit Intelligence using thematic searches conducted on 28 June 2026, followed by similarity-based searches conducted on 13 July 2026. Records were deduplicated at the patent-family level and screened for technological and sectoral relevance. The retained families were classified by analytical scope (Core or Support), documentary evidence strength (Explicit, Inferred or Weak), and technological route: R1 — recycling and material recovery; R2 — material reduction and lightweighting; and R3 — coatings and surface treatments. Route categories were non-mutually exclusive. Technical interfaces were recorded only when a documented technical relationship between routes was identified. Uncertain cases were reassessed using additional documentary excerpts or full-text patent examination. A paired independent classification was conducted for the validation sample, and agreement statistics and classification records are provided in the supplementary validation files. To reproduce the reported descriptive results, import the DATASET worksheet from the Research Data spreadsheet, retain all 300 rows, and calculate frequencies by summing the binary R1, R2 and R3 columns. Multilabel families are those for which R1 + R2 + R3 is greater than one. Scope, evidence strength, priority jurisdiction, priority period, standardized applicant and IPC/CPC frequencies can be reproduced by grouping the corresponding fields. The final expected totals are: 300 families, 156 Core, 144 Support, R1 = 56, R2 = 119, R3 = 166 and 40 multilabel families.

Institutions

• Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais

  Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte

Categories

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