Corrected Measures for Patent Citation Analysis: Accounting for Published Patent Applications

8 Pages Posted: 1 Aug 2019 Last revised: 11 Jan 2020

See all articles by Jeffrey M. Kuhn

Jeffrey M. Kuhn

University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill - Kenan-Flagler Business School

Kenneth A. Younge

Quant AI

Date Written: July 29, 2019

Abstract

This article investigates patent citations made to published patent applications. Although citations to patent publications are conceptually indistinguishable from citations to granted patents, they are omitted from all standard measures. We find that publication citations are a large and growing portion of patent citations, and that they differ statistically from citations to granted patents on several important dimensions. We conclude that omitting publication citations is likely to generate biased measures, and that standard measures of patent citations should be corrected. We release our computer code and corrections for future use.

Keywords: patent citations, patent publications, measure construction, measure bias

JEL Classification: O30, O31, O34, K11, C81

Suggested Citation

Kuhn, Jeffrey M. and Younge, Kenneth A., Corrected Measures for Patent Citation Analysis: Accounting for Published Patent Applications (July 29, 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3428375 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3428375

Jeffrey M. Kuhn (Contact Author)

University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill - Kenan-Flagler Business School ( email )

McColl Building
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3490
United States

Kenneth A. Younge

Quant AI ( email )

Pully, Vaud 1009
Switzerland

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.quant.ai

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