Measuring the Value of Inventions Using Patent Data : Comparison of citation and integrated index

Abstract

The citation data of invention applied to patents, which is deemed to reflect the patent value, has been frequently used in economic analysis. There has been a lot of research which analyzes the relationship between company value or its productivity and the number of inventions weighted by the number of citations. On the other hand, there has been preceding research which suggests there are attributes other than citation which reflect the value of invention. For example, other attributes such as the number of objections, IPC classifications and inventors are suggested to reflect the value. In this paper, the index was calculated by integrating multiple attributes from preceding research. I compared the calculated index and the citation data by using the Cobb-Douglas production function. According to results, the index better explains the value added of companies and fits better with industry consensus than citation does.