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What makes the first forward citation of a patent occur earlier?

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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.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (2016R1A2A1A05005270).

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  1. Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Jungpyo Lee & So Young Sohn

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Lee, J., Sohn, S.Y. What makes the first forward citation of a patent occur earlier?. Scientometrics 113, 279–298 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2480-1

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