IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v117y2018i2d10.1007_s11192-018-2885-5.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The choice of examiner patent citations for refusals: evidence from the trilateral offices

Author

Listed:
  • Tetsuo Wada

    (Gakushuin University)

Abstract

Utilizing a novel methodology based on international family-to-family patent citation data, this paper directly compares X/Y patent citations (i.e., those cited as grounds for rejections, equivalent to “blocking patents” in the US) between major patent offices. Remarkable discrepancies between the offices were revealed, despite the common patentability criteria of novelty and inventive step to generate citations. This paper then introduces a simple cosine similarity measurement between a family of X/Y patent citations and all citations added globally to the same original application. How the discrepancies of X/Y patent citations at the European Patent Office (EPO) and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) relate to the characteristics of applications and longitudinal aspects of office actions were also examined. X/Y patent citations from both the EPO and USPTO commonly show that the range of patent application classes is positively correlated with divergent reasons for refusal, suggesting that costly examinations lead to diversified X/Y patent citations. One novel methodological feature of this paper is that examiner citations across jurisdictions are comparable if we employ family-to-family citations and common criteria for the X/Y citation category. Furthermore, unlike the normal citation-generating process where a citing document adds citations to prior art only once, this paper represents the first attempt to analyze a citation network with multiple citing opportunities from separate parties. We find that the variance of citation linkages has a negative relationship with the ease in which different citers evaluate prior art in the same way, thereby providing a new perspective on the notion of breadth in citation impact.

Suggested Citation

  • Tetsuo Wada, 2018. "The choice of examiner patent citations for refusals: evidence from the trilateral offices," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(2), pages 825-843, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:117:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-018-2885-5
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-018-2885-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-018-2885-5
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-018-2885-5?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hegde, Deepak & Sampat, Bhaven, 2009. "Examiner citations, applicant citations, and the private value of patents," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 105(3), pages 287-289, December.
    2. Juan Alcácer & Michelle Gittelman, 2006. "Patent Citations as a Measure of Knowledge Flows: The Influence of Examiner Citations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(4), pages 774-779, November.
    3. Jaffe, Adam B, 1986. "Technological Opportunity and Spillovers of R&D: Evidence from Firms' Patents, Profits, and Market Value," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 984-1001, December.
    4. Michael D. Frakes & Melissa F. Wasserman, 2017. "Is the Time Allocated to Review Patent Applications Inducing Examiners to Grant Invalid Patents? Evidence from Microlevel Application Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(3), pages 550-563, July.
    5. Criscuolo, Paola & Verspagen, Bart, 2008. "Does it matter where patent citations come from? Inventor vs. examiner citations in European patents," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 1892-1908, December.
    6. Mark A. Lemley & Bhaven Sampat, 2012. "Examiner Characteristics and Patent Office Outcomes," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(3), pages 817-827, August.
    7. Jian Wang & Bart Thijs & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2015. "Interdisciplinarity and Impact: Distinct Effects of Variety, Balance, and Disparity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(5), pages 1-18, May.
    8. Tetsuo Wada, 2016. "Obstacles to prior art searching by the trilateral patent offices: empirical evidence from International Search Reports," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(2), pages 701-722, May.
    9. Cotropia, Christopher A. & Lemley, Mark A. & Sampat, Bhaven, 2013. "Do applicant patent citations matter?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 844-854.
    10. Elizabeth Webster & Paul H. Jensen & Alfons Palangkaraya, 2014. "Patent examination outcomes and the national treatment principle," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 45(2), pages 449-469, June.
    11. Hélène Dernis & Mosahid Khan, 2004. "Triadic Patent Families Methodology," OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers 2004/2, OECD Publishing.
    12. Webster, Elizabeth & Palangkaraya, Alfons & Jensen, Paul H., 2007. "Characteristics of international patent application outcomes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 362-368, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tetsuo Wada, 2020. "When do the USPTO examiners cite as the EPO examiners? An analysis of examination spillovers through rejection citations at the international family-to-family level," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1591-1615, November.
    2. Petit, Elise & van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, Bruno & Gimeno-Fabra, Lluis, 2023. "Are patent offices substitutes?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(8).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tetsuo Wada, 2020. "When do the USPTO examiners cite as the EPO examiners? An analysis of examination spillovers through rejection citations at the international family-to-family level," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1591-1615, November.
    2. WADA Tetsuo, 2018. "The Choice of Examiner Patent Citations for Refusals: Evidence from the trilateral offices," Discussion papers 18046, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    3. Tetsuo Wada, 2016. "Obstacles to prior art searching by the trilateral patent offices: empirical evidence from International Search Reports," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(2), pages 701-722, May.
    4. WADA Tetsuo, 2015. "Cognitive Distances in Prior Art Search by the Triadic Patent Offices: Empirical evidence from international search reports," Discussion papers 15096, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    5. Joaquín M. Azagra-Caro & Elena M. Tur, 2018. "Examiner trust in applicants to the European Patent Office: country specificities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(3), pages 1319-1348, December.
    6. Petit, Elise & van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, Bruno & Gimeno-Fabra, Lluis, 2023. "Are patent offices substitutes?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(8).
    7. Adam B. Jaffe & Gaétan de Rassenfosse, 2017. "Patent citation data in social science research: Overview and best practices," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 68(6), pages 1360-1374, June.
    8. Bekkers, Rudi & Martinelli, Arianna & Tamagni, Federico, 2020. "The impact of including standards-related documentation in patent prior art: Evidence from an EPO policy change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(7).
    9. Sun, Zhen & Wright, Brian D., 2022. "Citations backward and forward: Insights into the patent examiner's role," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(7).
    10. Hur, Wonchang & Oh, Junbyoung, 2021. "A man is known by the company he keeps?: A structural relationship between backward citation and forward citation of patents," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(1).
    11. Higham, Kyle & Contisciani, Martina & De Bacco, Caterina, 2022. "Multilayer patent citation networks: A comprehensive analytical framework for studying explicit technological relationships," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    12. Corinne Langinier & Stéphanie Lluis, 2021. "Departure And Promotion Of U.S. Patent Examiners: Do Patent Characteristics Matter?," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 39(2), pages 416-434, April.
    13. Hain, Daniel S. & Jurowetzki, Roman & Buchmann, Tobias & Wolf, Patrick, 2022. "A text-embedding-based approach to measuring patent-to-patent technological similarity," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    14. Kuan, Chung-Huei & Lin, Jia-Tian & Chen, Dar-Zen, 2021. "Characterizing Patent Assignees by Their Structural Positions Relative to a Field’s Evolutionary Trajectory," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).
    15. Azagra-Caro,Joaquín M. & Tur,Elena M., 2014. "Examiner amendments to applications to the european patent office: Procedures, knowledge bases and country specificities," INGENIO (CSIC-UPV) Working Paper Series 201406, INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), revised 29 Nov 2018.
    16. Raffiee, Joseph & Teodoridis, Florenta & Fehder, Daniel, 2023. "Partisan patent examiners? Exploring the link between the political ideology of patent examiners and patent office outcomes," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(9).
    17. Chen, Lixin, 2017. "Do patent citations indicate knowledge linkage? The evidence from text similarities between patents and their citations," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 63-79.
    18. Petra Moser & Joerg Ohmstedt & Paul W. Rhode, 2018. "Patent Citations—An Analysis of Quality Differences and Citing Practices in Hybrid Corn," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(4), pages 1926-1940, April.
    19. Nagaoka, Sadao & Motohashi, Kazuyuki & Goto, Akira, 2010. "Patent Statistics as an Innovation Indicator," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1083-1127, Elsevier.
    20. Battke, Benedikt & Schmidt, Tobias S. & Stollenwerk, Stephan & Hoffmann, Volker H., 2016. "Internal or external spillovers—Which kind of knowledge is more likely to flow within or across technologies," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 27-41.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Examiner citation; X/Y citations; DOCDB patent family; Family-to-family citations; Blocking patents; Trilateral offices; Triadic patent;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K29 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Other
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:117:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-018-2885-5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.