IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/qucehw/201806.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

That's classified! Inventing a new patent taxonomy

Author

Listed:
  • Billington, Stephen D.
  • Hanna, Alan J.

Abstract

Patent studies inform our understanding of innovation. Any study of patenting involves classifying patent data according to a chosen taxonomy. The literature has produced numerous taxonomies, which means patents are being classified differently across studies. This potential inconsistency is compounded by a lack of documentation provided on existing taxonomies, making them diffcult to replicate. Because of this, we develop a new patent taxonomy using machine learning techniques, and propose a new methodology to automate patent classification. We contrast existing taxonomies with our own upon a widely used patent dataset. In a regression analysis of patent classes upon patent characteristics, we show that classification bias exists: the size, statistical significance, and direction of association of coefficients depend upon how a patent dataset has been classified. We recommend investigators adopt our approach to ensure future studies are comparable and replicable.

Suggested Citation

  • Billington, Stephen D. & Hanna, Alan J., 2018. "That's classified! Inventing a new patent taxonomy," QUCEH Working Paper Series 2018-06, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:qucehw:201806
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/179519/1/1023704625.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sokoloff, Kenneth L., 1988. "Inventive Activity in Early Industrial America: Evidence From Patent Records, 1790–1846," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(4), pages 813-850, December.
    2. Petra Moser, 2005. "How Do Patent Laws Influence Innovation? Evidence from Nineteenth-Century World's Fairs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1214-1236, September.
    3. Philippe Aghion & Nick Bloom & Richard Blundell & Rachel Griffith & Peter Howitt, 2005. "Competition and Innovation: an Inverted-U Relationship," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(2), pages 701-728.
    4. Sullivan, Richard J., 1989. "England's Age of invention: The acceleration of patents and patentable invention during the industrial revolution," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 424-452, October.
    5. Saul Lach & Mark Schankerman, 2008. "Incentives and invention in universities," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(2), pages 403-433, June.
    6. Bottomley, Sean, 2014. "Patenting in England, Scotland and Ireland during the Industrial Revolution, 1700-1852," IAST Working Papers 14-07, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    7. Nanda, Ramana & Nicholas, Tom, 2014. "Did bank distress stifle innovation during the Great Depression?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 273-292.
    8. Bronwyn H. Hall & Adam Jaffe & Manuel Trajtenberg, 2005. "Market Value and Patent Citations," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(1), pages 16-38, Spring.
    9. Joe S. Bain, 1951. "Relation of Profit Rate to Industry Concentration: American Manufacturing, 1936–1940," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 65(3), pages 293-324.
    10. Rajan, Raghuram G & Zingales, Luigi, 1998. "Financial Dependence and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 559-586, June.
    11. Liam Brunt & Josh Lerner & Tom Nicholas, 2012. "Inducement Prizes and Innovation," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(4), pages 657-696, December.
    12. Hall, B. & Jaffe, A. & Trajtenberg, M., 2001. "The NBER Patent Citations Data File: Lessons, Insights and Methodological Tools," Papers 2001-29, Tel Aviv.
    13. Nuvolari, Alessandro & Tartari, Valentina, 2011. "Bennet Woodcroft and the value of English patents, 1617-1841," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 97-115, January.
    14. repec:fth:harver:1473 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. B. Zorina Khan, 2018. "Human capital, knowledge and economic development: evidence from the British Industrial Revolution, 1750–1930," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 12(2), pages 313-341, May.
    16. Sibylle Lehmann-Hasemeyer & Jochen Streb, 2016. "The Berlin Stock Exchange in Imperial Germany: A Market for New Technology?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(11), pages 3558-3576, November.
    17. Lybbert, Travis J. & Zolas, Nikolas J., 2014. "Getting patents and economic data to speak to each other: An ‘Algorithmic Links with Probabilities’ approach for joint analyses of patenting and economic activity," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 530-542.
    18. Khan, B. Zorina, 2015. "Inventing Prizes: A Historical Perspective on Innovation Awards and Technology Policy," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(4), pages 631-660, January.
    19. Zorina Khan & Kenneth L. Sokoloff, 2004. "Institutions and Democratic Invention in 19th-Century America: Evidence from "Great Inventors," 1790-1930," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 395-401, May.
    20. Khan, B. Zorina, 2013. "Selling Ideas: An International Perspective on Patenting and Markets for Technological Innovations, 1790–1930," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 39-68, April.
    21. Nicholas, Tom, 2011. "The origins of Japanese technological modernization," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 272-291, April.
    22. Galasso, Alberto & Schankerman, Mark, 2015. "Patents and cumulative innovation: causal evidence from the courts," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 61614, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    23. Leonid Kogan & Dimitris Papanikolaou & Amit Seru & Noah Stoffman, 2017. "Technological Innovation, Resource Allocation, and Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(2), pages 665-712.
    24. Zvi Griliches, 1998. "Patent Statistics as Economic Indicators: A Survey," NBER Chapters, in: R&D and Productivity: The Econometric Evidence, pages 287-343, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    25. Siegel, Donald S. & Westhead, Paul & Wright, Mike, 2003. "Assessing the impact of university science parks on research productivity: exploratory firm-level evidence from the United Kingdom," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 21(9), pages 1357-1369, November.
    26. Tom Nicholas, 2011. "Independent invention during the rise of the corporate economy in Britain and Japan," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64(3), pages 995-1023, August.
    27. Luc Anselin & Attila Varga & Zoltan Acs, 2008. "Local Geographic Spillovers Between University Research and High Technology Innovations," Chapters, in: Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy, chapter 9, pages 95-121, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    28. Walsh, John P. & Lee, You-Na & Jung, Taehyun, 2016. "Win, lose or draw? The fate of patented inventions," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(7), pages 1362-1373.
    29. Marc Klemp & Jacob Weisdorf, 2012. "The lasting damage to mortality of early-life adversity: evidence from the English famine of the late 1720s," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 16(3), pages 233-246, August.
    30. B. Zorina Khan, 2017. "Prestige and Profit: The Royal Society of Arts and Incentives for Innovation, 1750-1850," NBER Working Papers 23042, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    31. Bottomley, Sean, 2014. "Patenting in England, Scotland and Ireland during the Industrial Revolution, 1700–1852," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 48-63.
    32. Carsten Burhop & Sibylle Lehmann-Hasemeyer, 2016. "The Berlin stock exchange and the geography of German stock markets in 1913," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 20(4), pages 429-451.
    33. Petra Moser, 2012. "Innovation without Patents: Evidence from World's Fairs," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(1), pages 43-74.
    34. Greene, William, 2008. "Functional forms for the negative binomial model for count data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(3), pages 585-590, June.
    35. MacLeod,Christine, 2002. "Inventing the Industrial Revolution," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521893992, September.
    36. Burhop, Carsten & Wolf, Nikolaus, 2013. "The German Market for Patents during the “Second Industrialization,” 1884–1913: A Gravity Approach," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 69-93, April.
    37. B. Zorina Khan, 2013. "Going for Gold. Industrial Fairs and Innovation in the Nineteenth-Century United States," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 64(1), pages 89-113.
    38. Tom Nicholas, 2008. "Does Innovation Cause Stock Market Runups? Evidence from the Great Crash," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1370-1396, September.
    39. Albert N. Link & John T. Scott, 2007. "The economics of university research parks," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 23(4), pages 661-674, Winter.
    40. B. Zorina Khan, 2015. "Inventing Prizes: A Historical Perspective on Innovation Awards and Technology Policy," NBER Working Papers 21375, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    41. Samuel Kortum & Jonathan Putnam, 1997. "Assigning Patents to Industries: Tests of the Yale Technology Concordance," Economic Systems Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(2), pages 161-176.
    42. Nicholas, Tom, 2011. "Did R&D Firms Used to Patent? Evidence from the First Innovation Surveys," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(4), pages 1032-1059, December.
    43. Shai Bernstein, 2015. "Does Going Public Affect Innovation?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(4), pages 1365-1403, August.
    44. Ryan Lampe & Petra Moser, 2016. "Patent Pools, Competition, and Innovation—Evidence from 20 US Industries under the New Deal," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 32(1), pages 1-36.
    45. Daniel K. N. Johnson, 2002. "The OECD Technology Concordance (OTC): Patents by Industry of Manufacture and Sector of Use," OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers 2002/5, OECD Publishing.
    46. Sullivan, Richard J., 1990. "The Revolution of Ideas: Widespread Patenting and Invention During the English Industrial Revolution," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(2), pages 349-362, June.
    47. Suzanne Scotchmer, 1991. "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Cumulative Research and the Patent Law," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 29-41, Winter.
    48. Alberto Galasso & Mark Schankerman, 2015. "Patents and Cumulative Innovation: Causal Evidence from the Courts," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(1), pages 317-369.
    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. Billington, Stephen D., 2018. ""War, what is it good for?": The industrial revolution!," QUCEH Working Paper Series 2018-12, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History.
    2. Billington, Stephen D., 2018. "Patent costs and the value of inventions: Explaining patenting behaviour between England, Ireland and Scotland, 1617-1852," QUCEH Working Paper Series 2018-10, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History.

    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. Billington, Stephen D., 2018. "Patent costs and the value of inventions: Explaining patenting behaviour between England, Ireland and Scotland, 1617-1852," QUCEH Working Paper Series 2018-10, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History.
    2. Petra Moser & Joerg Ohmstedt & Paul M. Rhode, 2016. "Patent Citations - An Analysis of Quality Differences and Citing Practices in Hybrid Corn," Working Papers 16-05, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    3. 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.
    4. Alexander Donges & Felix Selgert, 2019. "Technology transfer via foreign patents in Germany, 1843–77," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 72(1), pages 182-208, February.
    5. Petra Moser & Joerg Ohmstedt & Paul W. Rhode, 2015. "Patent Citations and the Size of the Inventive Step - Evidence from Hybrid Corn," NBER Working Papers 21443, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Nuvolari, Alessandro & Tartari, Valentina & Tranchero, Matteo, 2021. "Patterns of innovation during the Industrial Revolution: A reappraisal using a composite indicator of patent quality," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    7. Baghai, Ramin & Silva, Rui & Ye, Luofu, 2018. "Teams and Bankruptcy," CEPR Discussion Papers 13198, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Donges, Alexander & Selgert, Felix, 2019. "The Consequences of Radical Patent-Regime Change," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203662, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    9. Filippo Mezzanotti, 2021. "Roadblock to Innovation: The Role of Patent Litigation in Corporate R&D," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(12), pages 7362-7390, December.
    10. Higham, Kyle & de Rassenfosse, Gaétan & Jaffe, Adam B., 2021. "Patent Quality: Towards a Systematic Framework for Analysis and Measurement," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(4).
    11. Alexander Donges & Jean-Marie Meier & Rui C. Silva, 2023. "The Impact of Institutions on Innovation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(4), pages 1951-1974, April.
    12. Gamba, Simona, 2017. "The Effect of Intellectual Property Rights on Domestic Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Sector," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 15-27.
    13. Ching-Hung Chang & Qingqing Wu, 2021. "Board Networks and Corporate Innovation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 3618-3654, June.
    14. Giacomo Domini, 2019. "Exhibitions, patents, and innovation in the early twentieth century: evidence from the Turin 1911 International Exhibition," LEM Papers Series 2019/04, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    15. Fontana, Roberto & Nuvolari, Alessandro & Shimizu, Hiroshi & Vezzulli, Andrea, 2013. "Reassessing patent propensity: Evidence from a dataset of R&D awards, 1977–2004," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(10), pages 1780-1792.
    16. B. Zorina Khan, 2014. "Of Time and Space: Technological Spillovers among Patents and Unpatented Innovations during Early U.S. Industrialization," NBER Working Papers 20732, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Freilich, Janet & Shahshahani, Sepehr, 2023. "Measuring follow-on innovation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(9).
    18. Acharya, Viral & Xu, Zhaoxia, 2017. "Financial dependence and innovation: The case of public versus private firms," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(2), pages 223-243.
    19. Philippe Aghion & Peter Howitt & Susanne Prantl, 2015. "Patent rights, product market reforms, and innovation," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 223-262, September.
    20. Danzer, Alexander M. & Danzer, Natalia & Feuerbaum, Carsten, 2023. "Military Spending and Innovation: Learning from 19th Century World Fair Exhibition Data," IZA Discussion Papers 16034, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Innovation; Invention; Machine Learning; Patents; Patent Classification; Taxonomy; Economic History;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law
    • N24 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Europe: 1913-
    • N74 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Europe: 1913-
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zbw:qucehw:201806. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/chqubuk.html .

    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.