Patent citations reexamined

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kuhn, Jeffrey; Younge, Kenneth; Marco, Alan
• 署名单位: University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain; Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne; University System of Georgia; Georgia Institute of Technology
• 刊物名称: RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0741-6261
• DOI: 10.1111/1756-2171.12307
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 109-132
• 关键词: knowledge spillovers; market value; geography; search; FLOWS

摘要

Many studies rely on patent citations to measure intellectual heritage and impact. In this article, we show that the nature of patent citations has changed dramatically in recent years. Today, a small minority of patent applications are generating a large majority of patent citations, and the mean technological similarity between citing and cited patents has fallen considerably. We replicate several well-known studies in industrial organization and innovation economics and demonstrate how generalized assumptions about the nature of patent citations have misled the field.