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research article

Patent Quality: Towards a Systematic Framework for Analysis and Measurement

Higham, Kyle  
•
de Rassenfosse, Gaetan  
•
Jaffe, Adam B.
May 1, 2021
Research Policy

The quality of novel technological innovations is extremely variable, and the ability to measure innovation quality is essential to sensible, evidence-based policy. Patents, an often vital precursor to a commercialised innovation, share this heterogeneous quality distribution. A pertinent question then arises: How should we define and measure patent quality? Accepting that different parties have different views of, and different sets of terminologies for discussing this concept, we take a multi-dimensional view of patent quality in this work. We first test the consistency of popular post-grant outcomes that are often used as patent quality measures. Finding these measures to be generally inconsistent, we then use a raft of patent indicators available at the time of grant to dissect the characteristics of different post-grant outcomes. We find broad disagreement in the relative importance of individual characteristics between outcomes and, further, significant variation of the same across technologies within outcomes. We conclude that measurement of patent quality is highly sensitive to both the observable outcome selected and the technology type. Our findings bear concrete implications for scholarly research using patent data and policy discussions about patent quality.

  • Details
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Type
research article
DOI
10.1016/j.respol.2021.104215
Web of Science ID

WOS:000635451200014

Author(s)
Higham, Kyle  
de Rassenfosse, Gaetan  
Jaffe, Adam B.
Date Issued

2021-05-01

Publisher

ELSEVIER

Published in
Research Policy
Volume

50

Issue

4

Article Number

104215

Subjects

Management

•

Business & Economics

•

patents

•

patent quality

•

patent value

•

patent citations

•

patent policy

•

technological impact

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
STIP  
Available on Infoscience
May 8, 2021
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/177943
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