Fig. 5.

Patent citation network and relevant technological distribution. (A) Citation network among STING-related patents. (B) Technological class distribution of patents involved in the largest component of the network. Nodes in the network represent patent applications, and the edges represent citation connections between patent families, pointing from the cited patents toward the citing ones. The node size was set by its degree value, which was also the sum of connections of each node. The colors of nodes in the network and the donut chart reflect the technological subject class of the patents, which are consistent with that in Fig. 4.