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Low-quality patents are of considerable concern to businesses operating in patent-dense markets. There are two pathways by which low-quality patents may be issued: the patent office may apply systematically a standard that is too lenient (low inventive step threshold); or the patent office may grant patents that are, in fact, below its own threshold (so-called ‘weak’ patents). This paper uses novel data from inventions that have been examined at the five largest patent offices and an explicit model of the grant process to derive first-of-their-kind office-specific estimates of the height of the inventive step threshold and the prevalence of weak patents. The empirical analysis is based on patent applications granted at one office but refused at another office. We estimate that the fraction of patent grants associated with a patent standard that is lower than that of other countries ranges from 2-15%, with Japan having the tightest standard and the United States and China the loosest. The fraction of grants that are inconsistent with the office’s own standard ranges from 2-6 per cent. The fraction of grants that are inconsistent in this sense is generally higher in newer fields such as software and biotechnology, and lower in traditional fields such as mechanical engineering. Our estimates of invalidity are much lower than those that have been derived from litigation studies, consistent with litigated patents being highly non-representative of the population.

Previous research suggests creative ability peaks in the age decades of the 30s and early 40s, and declines thereafter, with some variation across fields. Building from the cognitive aging literature, we expect differences in the rate of creation and qualitative nature of creative works by age. Cognitive processes show aging-related changes with increases in experience-based knowledge (pragmatics or crystallized abilities) and decreases in the ability to process novel information quickly and efficiently (mechanics or fluid abilities). We describe a new database created by combining the publicly available patent data with information on inventor ages scraped from directory websites on the web for approximately 1.2 million U.S.-resident inventors patenting between 1976 and 2017. Our results suggest that cross-sectional and within-inventor patenting rates are similar, peaking at around the early 40s for both women and men. We find varying results for attributes of patents in relation to age, some of which are consistent with cognitive aging theory. For solo inventors, backward citations and originality, which are connected to experience, were found to increase with age. Forward citations, number of claims, and generality measures, as well as a citation-based measure of disruptiveness decline on average with inventor age. A similar pattern was found for performance in teams based on the average age of inventors in the team. Exploration of age diversity showed that teams with a wider age range had patents that are slightly more important (i.e., with more forward citations). The findings have the potential to advance scholarship on the life course of innovation with implications for workplace policies.

This paper overviews the data collection procedures and resulting data for inventor ages and associated death dates. We use information about inventors from patents (name and location) and search for age and date of death information from publicly available online web directories and build a scoring system to indicate the quality of information that we collect. After applying a variety of heuristics and robustness checks, we are confident of 1,508,676 inventor ages associated with patents granted between 1976 and 2018. We also find the death dates of 206,589 inventors, though we are not as confident of the accuracy of the death information. The datasets and associated replication files are freely available at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YRLSKU Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

We analyse whether research funding contests promote co-authorship. Our analysis combines Scopus publication records with data on applications to the Marsden Fund, the premier source of funding for basic research in New Zealand. On average, and after controlling for observable and unobservable heterogeneity, applicant pairs were 13.8 percentage points more likely to coauthor in a given year if they co-proposed during the previous ten years than if they did not. This co-authorship rate was not significantly higher among funded pairs. However, when we increase post-proposal publication lags towards the length of a typical award, we find that funding, rather than participation, promotes co-authorship.

The challenge of mitigating climate change has focused recent attention on basic scientific research feeding into the development of new energy technologies (Popp, 2017). Energy innovation tends to consist of a series of partially overlapping processes involving: (1) the production of scientific and technological knowledge, (2) the translation of that knowledge into working technologies or artifacts, and (3) the introduction of the artifacts into the marketplace, where they are matched with users’ requirements. However, relatively little data are available showing how long each of these processes takes for energy technologies. Here we combine information from patent applications with bibliographic data to shine light on the second process—that is, the translation of scientific knowledge into working prototypes. Our results show that “clean” energy technologies are more dependent on underlying science than “dirty” technologies, and that the average lag between publication of scientific findings and the incorporation of those findings in clean energy patents has risen from about five to about eight years since the 1980s. These findings will help policymakers to devise more effective mechanisms and strategies for accelerating the overall rate of technological change in this domain.

The 'quality' of novel technological innovations is extremely variable, and the ability to measure innovation quality is essential to sensible, evidence-based policy. Patents, an often vital precursor to a commercialised innovation, share this heterogeneous quality distribution. A pertinent question then arises: How should we define and measure patent quality? Accepting that different stakeholders have different views of this concept, we take a multi-dimensional view of patent quality in this work. We first test the consistency of popular post-grant outcomes that are often used as patent quality measures. Finding these measures to be generally inconsistent, we then use a raft of patent indicators that are defined at the time of grant to dissect the characteristics associated with different post-grant outcomes. We find broad disagreement in the relative importance of individual characteristics between outcomes and, further, significant variation of the same across technologies within outcomes. We conclude that measurement of patent quality is highly sensitive to both stakeholder viewpoint and technology type. Our findings bear implications for scholarly research using patent data as well as for policy discussions about patent quality. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

We analyze whether research funding contests promote co-authorship. Our analysis combines Scopus publication records with data on the Marsden Fund, the premier source of funding for basic research in New Zealand. We use fixed-effect models to analyze within-researcher-pair variation in co-authorship. Among pairs who ever co-authored or co-proposed, co-authorship was 13.8 percentage points more likely in a given year if they had co-proposed during the previous ten years than if they had not. This co-authorship rate was not significantly higher among funded pairs. However, when we increase post-proposal publication lags towards the length of a typical award, we find that funding, rather than participation, promotes co-authorship.

We combine survey and administrative data for about 13,000 New Zealand firms from 2005 to 2013 to study intangible investment and firm performance. We find that firm size and moderate competition is associated with higher intangible investment, while firm age is associated with lower intangible investment. Examining firm performance, we find that higher investment is associated with higher labour and capital input, higher revenue, and higher firm-reported employee and customer satisfaction, but not with higher productivity or profitability. The evidence suggests that intangible investment is associated with growth and ‘soft’ performance objectives, but not with productivity or profitability.

This paper presents estimates of the depreciation rate of innovations using survey data on revenues associated with Australian patents. Its novelty is twofold. First, it relies on direct observation of the revenue streams of inventions. This is in sharp contrast with previous studies, which all rely on models based on indirect observation and require strong identifying assumptions. Second, it presents estimates of the effect of patent protection on the depreciation rate. Results suggest that the depreciation rate is in 2–7% range. Inventions for which a patent is granted are associated with a 1–2 percentage point reduction in the depreciation rate.

Despite the urgent case for bringing new energy technologies to the marketplace, the delivery of these innovations has been frustratingly slow, often taking several decades to develop even the most promising ideas into novel technologies that achieve a significant amount of market penetration. The pathway for delivering new energy technologies is frequently discussed in the literature in a vague and aggregated way, but innovation tends to consist of a series of partially overlapping processes consisting of: (1) the production of scientific and technological knowledge, (2) the translation of that knowledge into working technologies or artifacts, and (3) the introduction of the artifacts into the marketplace, where they are matched with users’ requirements. However, relatively little data is available showing how long each of these processes takes for energy technologies. Here we combine information from patent applications with bibliographic data to shine light on the second process—that is, the translation of scientific knowledge into working prototypes. Our results show that energy technologies take an average of approximately 10 years to pass through this phase. These findings will help policymakers to devise more effective mechanisms and strategies for accelerating the overall rate of technological change in this domain.

The paper investigates whether patent fees are an effective mechanism to deter the filing of low-quality patent applications. The study analyzes the effect of the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1982, which resulted in a fivefold increase in patenting costs at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), on various indicators of patent quality. Using a series of difference-in-differences regressions, I find evidence that the increase in fees was associated with an increase in patent quality. The effect is strongest for companies with a small patent portfolio. The study has strong policy implications in the current context of concerns about declines in patent quality and the financial vulnerability of the USPTO.

We estimate the impact of the NZ Marsden Fund on research success, by comparing the subsequent performance of funded and unfunded researchers. We control for selection bias using the Marsden panel rankings. We find that funding is associated with a 6%–15% increase in publications and an 11%–22% increase in citation-weighted papers for research teams. We attempt to pin down the dynamic structure of this effect by looking at the research trajectories of individual researchers, but this model yields inconsistent results. We find no systematic evidence that Marsden panel rankings are predictive of subsequent success.

Low-quality patents are of considerable concern to businesses operating in patent-dense markets. There are two pathways by which low-quality patents may be issued: the patent office may apply systematically a standard that is too lenient (low inventive step threshold); or the patent office may grant patents that are, in fact, below its own threshold (so-called ‘weak’ patents). This paper uses novel data from inventions that have been examined at the five largest patent offices and an explicit model of the grant process to derive first-of-their-kind office-specific estimates of the height of the inventive step threshold and the prevalence of weak patents. The empirical analysis is based on patent applications granted at one office but refused at another office. We estimate that the fraction of patent grants associated with a patent standard that is lower than that of other countries ranges from 2-15%, with Japan having the tightest standard and the United States and China the loosest. The fraction of grants that are inconsistent with the office’s own standard ranges from 2-6 per cent. The fraction of grants that are inconsistent in this sense is generally higher in newer fields such as software and biotechnology, and lower in traditional fields such as mechanical engineering. Our estimates of invalidity are much lower than those that have been derived from litigation studies, consistent with litigated patents being highly non-representative of the population.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

We have constructed a fitness parameter, characterizing the intrinsic attractiveness for patents to be cited, from attributes of the associated inventions known at the time a patent is granted. This exogenously obtained fitness is shown to determine the temporal growth of the citation network in conjunction with mechanisms of preferential attachment and obsolescence-induced ageing that operate without reference to characteristics of individual patents. Our study opens a window on understanding quantitatively the interplay of the rich-gets-richer and fit-gets-richer paradigms that have been suggested to govern the growth dynamics of real-world complex networks., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, RevTex4.1, v2: minor changes, version to appear as a Rapid Communication in Phys. Rev. E

This study examines the impact of government subsidy through R&D grants on innovation output for firms in New Zealand. Using a large database that links administrative and tax data with survey data, we find that R&D grants have a stronger effect on more novel innovation (e.g. applying for a patent or introducing new products to the world) than on incremental innovation (e.g. any product innovation) and that larger, project-based grants are more effective at promoting innovation than smaller, non-project-specific grants. There is little evidence that R&D grants have differential effects between smaller (

Public research is critical to the economy and society. However, tangible economic and social impact only occurs when research outputs are combined, used and reused with other elements and capabilities, to deliver a product, practice, or service. Assessing the context and influence of scholarship during the dynamic process of innovation rather than measuring ex post impact, may improve performance. With this aim, we integrated and interconnected scholarly citations with global patent literature, and here we offer new tools enabling diverse stakeholders to freely evaluate the influence published research has on the generation and potential use of inventions as reflected by the patent system. We outline an evolving toolkit, Lens Influence Mapping, that allows assessment of individual scholarly works and aggregated outputs of authors for influence on industry and enterprise as measured by citations within patents. This performance measure, applied at many levels and normalized by either research disciplines or technology fields of use, may expose and highlight institutional strength and practices, and guide their future partnerships

We use administrative data on the population of New Zealand construction firms from 2001-2012, along with linked data on their employees and working proprietors, to study the relationships among worker flows, entry, and firm productivity. We find that job churn is prevalent in construction, with around 60 percent of firm-worker pairs not existing previously or not existing subsequently. The data also show that firms gaining or losing any labour are more productive than static firms, and that firms gaining labour from other construction firms are 4-6 percent more productive than the industry average in a given year. Our analysis suggests such firms are productive in part because of knowledge flows from other construction firms; in our preferred specification, with firm fixed effects, a standard deviation increase in the productivity of new employees’ previous firms is associated with a 0.6 percent increase in productivity. New entrants are more productive than pre-existing firms. Firms that enter briefly and disappear exhibit high productivity for that brief period, and firms that enter and persist exhibit a persistent productivity advantage that averages about 5%, but which grows as experience accumulates. The entry and worker-knowledge-flow phenomena are distinct, in that the entry effect is not explained by employee composition, and non-entrant firms also benefit from worker knowledge flows.

Bibliometric databases on publications and their citations offer the possibility to quantify the scale and impact of this key output of scientific research. But there are many decisions to be made about how to construct these bibliometric measures, and no global consensus on how best to do so. We consider several measures of research output across scientific disciplines in New Zealand and test their sensitivity to a number of methodological choices. Factors considered include which publications to include in the analysis, ways to count publications co-authored by both local and international authors, and procedures for normalising citations. We also explore the potential to assign publications to disciplines by semantic analysis and a way to construct confidence intervals for the measures. The findings provide insight into the extent to which these methodological considerations impact on bibliometric results, and their interpretation, and how uncertainty in the results can be quantified.

We use administrative data on the population of New Zealand construction firms from 2001-2012, along with linked data on their employees and working proprietors, to study the relationships among worker flows, entry, and firm productivity. We find that job churn is prevalent in construction, with around 60 percent of firm-worker pairs not existing previously or not existing subsequently. The data also show that firms gaining or losing any labour are more productive than static firms, and that firms gaining labour from other construction firms are 4-6 percent more productive than the industry average in a given year. Our analysis suggests such firms are productive in part because of knowledge flows from other construction firms; in our preferred specification, with firm fixed effects, a standard deviation increase in the productivity of new employees’ previous firms is associated with a 0.6 percent increase in productivity. New entrants are more productive than pre-existing firms. Firms that enter briefly and disappear exhibit high productivity for that brief period, and firms that enter and persist exhibit a persistent productivity advantage that averages about 5%, but which grows as experience accumulates. The entry and worker-knowledge-flow phenomena are distinct, in that the entry effect is not explained by employee composition, and non-entrant firms also benefit from worker knowledge flows.

The phenomenon of “spillovers” of R&D means that small countries can benefit from the research and innovation investment of larger countries, but also need a strategy for capturing locally the benefits of local research and innovation investments. The Science of Science Policy provides models, measurement tools and insights to inform this process.

The problem of global climate change presents overwhelming factual, analytical, and normative challenges. Nordhaus surveys this terrain bravely and mostly successfully. He explains the scientific/economic consensus that the planet is warming, that people are responsible, that the consequences are bad, and that immediate action is benefit/ cost justified. He also discusses the efficient policy response, and the challenges of achieving coordinated global action. His approach is mostly that of standard neoclassical economics, and some of the limitations of that paradigm in this context are not addressed. But overall, The Climate Casino provides an excellent self-contained introduction to the subject. (JEL D61, H23, Q51, Q54, Q58, D72)

We analyze the time evolution of citations acquired by articles from journals of the American Physical Society (PRA, PRB, PRC, PRD, PRE and PRL). The observed change over time in the number of papers published in each journal is considered an exogenously caused variation in citability that is accounted for by a normalization. The appropriately inflation-adjusted citation rates are found to be separable into a preferential-attachment-type growth kernel and a purely obsolescence-related (i.e., monotonously decreasing as a function of time since publication) aging function. Variations in the empirically extracted parameters of the growth kernels and aging functions associated with different journals point to research-field-specific characteristics of citation intensity and knowledge flow. Comparison with analogous results for the citation dynamics of technology-disaggregated cohorts of patents provides deeper insight into the basic principles of information propagation as indicated by citing behavior., Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, Elsevier style, v2: revised version to appear in J. Informetrics

This paper presents estimates of the depreciation rate of innovations using survey data on revenues associated with Australian patents. Its novelty is twofold. First, it relies on direct observation of the revenue streams of inventions. This is in sharp contrast with previous studies, which all rely on models based on indirect observation and require strong identifying assumptions. Second, it presents estimates of the effect of patent protection on the depreciation rate. Results suggest that the depreciation rate is in the 2–7 per cent range. Inventions for which a patent is granted are associated with a 1–2 percentage point reduction in the depreciation rate.