Uncovering Gpts with Patent Data
41 Pages Posted: 2 Dec 2004 Last revised: 16 Oct 2022
Date Written: November 2004
Abstract
This paper asks the question: Can we see evidence of General Purpose Technologies in patent data? Using data on three million US patents granted between 1967 and 1999, and their citations received between 1975 and 2002, we construct a number of measures of GPTs, including generality, number of citations, and patent class growth, for patents themselves and for the patents that cite the patents. A selection of the top twenty patents in the tails of the distribution of several of these measures yields a set of mostly ICT technologies, of which the most important are those underlying transactions on the internet and object-oriented software. We conclude with a brief discussion of the problems we encountered in developing our measures and suggestions for future work in this area.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
By Bronwyn H. Hall and Raffaele Oriani
-
By Bronwyn H. Hall, Jacques Mairesse, ...
-
Profiting from Technological Innovation: The Effect of Competitor Patenting on Firm Value
-
An Extended Accelerator Model of R&D and Physical Investment
By Jacques Mairesse and Alan K. Siu
-
Organizational Choice in R&D Alliances: Knowledge Based and Transaction Cost Perspectives