A Feasibility Study: Development of Refined Indicators of Technology Innovation Using Examiners' Citations in the Patent File

摘要

The study shows that the commercial or technical importance of a patent is likely to be related to its degree of citation by examiners of subsequently issued patents. A set of 100 important patents was obtained by attempting to identify the key patents underlying products which received the 1969 and 1970 IR 100 award established by the journal Industrial Research and Development. A control set was developed of 102 randomly-selected patents with a time distribution identical to the set of important patents. The patents in the set of important patents were cited 2 1/2 times more frequently on the average than the randomly-selected control patent set from similar fields of technology.