IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamest/v36y1985i5p297-301.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are there enduring patents?

Author

Listed:
  • Elliot Noma
  • Dominic Olivastro

Abstract

U.S. patents (and the technology they represent) age and eventually become obsolete. In this diachronous study, the citations by patents in a given year are compared to the number in subsequent years. The major findings are that, even though influential patents remain influential as they age, both highly and infrequently cited patents age at the same rate. This means that citations do not automatically beget more citations, and without this bandwagon effect, no patents are enduring. In addition, the distribution of patents by number of citations received is stable over time (here, in each year they are distributed as a negative binomial).

Suggested Citation

  • Elliot Noma & Dominic Olivastro, 1985. "Are there enduring patents?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 36(5), pages 297-301, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:36:y:1985:i:5:p:297-301
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.4630360503
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630360503
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.4630360503?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
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Rodrigo Costas & Thed N. Leeuwen & Anthony F. J. Raan, 2011. "The “Mendel syndrome” in science: durability of scientific literature and its effects on bibliometric analysis of individual scientists," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 89(1), pages 177-205, October.

    More about this item

    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:bla:jamest:v:36:y:1985:i:5:p:297-301. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    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.