Abstract
Identifying the economic value of a patent is crucial to technology management. It also facilitates the commercialization and transactions of patents. As a proxy of patent value, forward citation counting is widely used, but it takes a long time for a patent to be sufficiently cited. In this context, we suggest the first citation lag, namely the time taken until the first citation, as a proxy of patent value, as it is positively correlated with the patent value and considers the fact that important patents with a high economic value tend to receive many citations in a short space of time. We explore the influential patent attributes related to the first citation lag to build a model to predict the patent value. By using the Cox proportional hazard model on green inventory patent data, we find that patents with a shorter technology cycle time and a larger number of IPC four-digit classes, claims, patent family, and backward citations are associated with the shorter first citation lag, while a patent’s science linkage has an inverse U-shaped relationship with the first citation lag. Further, patents having an unconventional technological core have a longer first citation lag and among patents having an unconventional technological core, the presence of a novel element makes the first citation earlier. Our study is expected to help patent evaluation in the early stage of technology transfer.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 279-298 |
Number of pages | 20 |
Journal | Scientometrics |
Volume | 113 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2017 Oct 1 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2017, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary.
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Social Sciences(all)
- Computer Science Applications
- Library and Information Sciences