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Analyzing the value of technology based on the differences of patent citations between applicants and examiners

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Abstract

Patent applicants and examiners do not always have the same point of view when conducting a prior-art search. Although several studies have suggested differences between citations by applicants and examiners, the data and range of empirical studies are too incomplete to generalize the characteristics of relationships between citation types and the value of a technology or invention. To overcome this limitation, it is crucial to compare citations by applicants and by examiners in depth, with diverse perspectives and data, to determine the value of patent information for technological innovation. Thus, this paper suggests that the differences in the composition of technical information and patent quality in patent-level investigations as well as the locus of the knowledge source and knowledge recentness in knowledge-level investigations according to patent citation type (by applicants and examiners) reflect Pavitt’s perspective on the nature, impact, and source of technological innovation. We found that the quality of patents cited by applicants is higher than that of those by examiners in four industries, excluding a supplier-dominated industry. The citation types are related to the locus of the knowledge source in four industries, excluding the supplier-dominated industry. In particular, the patents cited by examiners tended to be more recently issued in all sectoral fields. This research contributes to confirming the technological value of patents based on the citation behaviors of applicants and examiners through empirical analysis. The results can be utilized to investigate signals or noise in technological innovation and improve processes or systems of patent examination. In addition, it can help applicants conduct more thorough prior-art searches by comprehending the examiner’s perspective toward citations to increase the probability of patent registration.

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Notes

  1. NACE (Nomenclature des Activités Économiques dans la Communauté Européenne) is the European statistical classification of economic activities.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2014R1A1A2054892).

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  1. Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Dongguk University, Pil-dong 3-ga, Chung-gu, Seoul, 100-715, Korea

    Inchae Park, Yujin Jeong & Byungun Yoon

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  1. Inchae Park
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Correspondence to Byungun Yoon.

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Park, I., Jeong, Y. & Yoon, B. Analyzing the value of technology based on the differences of patent citations between applicants and examiners. Scientometrics 111, 665–691 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2323-0

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