IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/15096.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cognitive Distances in Prior Art Search by the Triadic Patent Offices: Empirical evidence from international search reports

Author

Listed:
  • Tetsuo WADA

Abstract

Despite large numbers of empirical studies being conducted on examiner patent citations, few have scrutinized the cognitive limitations of officials at patent offices in searching for prior art to add patent citations during patent prosecution. This research takes advantage of the longitudinal gap between international search reports (ISRs) required by the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and subsequent examination procedures in national phases. It inspects whether several kinds of distances actually affect the probability that a piece of prior art is caught at the time of ISRs, which is much earlier than national phase examinations. Based on triadic PCT applications for all of the triadic patent offices (European Patent Office (EPO), United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and Japan Patent Office (JPO)) between 2002 and 2005 and their citations made by the triadic offices, evidence shows that geographical distances negatively affect the probability of prior patents being caught in ISRs, while a lag of prior art positively affects the probability. Also, the technological complexity of an application negatively affects the probability, whereas the size of forward citations of prior art affects it positively. These results show the existence of cognitive restrictions borne by officials at the patent offices, and suggest issues for designing work sharing by patent offices, in that the duplication of search costs exists only where search horizons of patent offices overlap each other.

Suggested Citation

  • Tetsuo WADA, 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).
    • Handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:15096
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/15e096.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adam Jaffe & Manuel Trajtenberg, 1999. "International Knowledge Flows: Evidence From Patent Citations," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(1-2), pages 105-136.
    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. Manuel Trajtenberg, 1990. "A Penny for Your Quotes: Patent Citations and the Value of Innovations," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(1), pages 172-187, Spring.
    4. 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.
    5. Emmanuel Duguet & Megan MacGarvie, 2005. "How well do patent citations measure flows of technology? Evidence from French innovation surveys," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(5), pages 375-393.
    6. Adam B. Jaffe & Manuel Trajtenberg & Rebecca Henderson, 1993. "Geographic Localization of Knowledge Spillovers as Evidenced by Patent Citations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(3), pages 577-598.
    7. 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.
    8. Alfons Palangkaraya & Elizabeth Webster & Paul H. Jensen, 2011. "Misclassification between Patent Offices: Evidence from a Matched Sample of Patent Applications," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(3), pages 1063-1075, August.
    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. Michael D. Frakes & Melissa F. Wasserman, 2014. "Is the Time Allocated to Review Patent Applications Inducing Examiners to Grant Invalid Patents?: Evidence from Micro-Level Application Data," NBER Working Papers 20337, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Manuel Trajtenberg & Adam B. Jaffe & Michael S. Fogarty, 2000. "Knowledge Spillovers and Patent Citations: Evidence from a Survey of Inventors," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 215-218, May.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. 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)

    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, 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Fernández, Ana María & Ferrándiz, Esther & Medina, Jennifer, 2022. "The diffusion of energy technologies. Evidence from renewable, fossil, and nuclear energy patents," MPRA Paper 123361, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Fernández, Ana María & Ferrándiz, Esther & Medina, Jennifer, 2022. "The diffusion of energy technologies. Evidence from renewable, fossil, and nuclear energy patents," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    6. Tetsuo WADA, 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).
    7. 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.
    8. Emanuele Bacchiocchi & Fabio Montobbio, 2010. "International Knowledge Diffusion and Home‐bias Effect: Do USPTO and EPO Patent Citations Tell the Same Story?," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 112(3), pages 441-470, September.
    9. Ernest Miguélez & Rosina Moreno, 2016. "“Relatedness, external linkages and innovation”," IREA Working Papers 201603, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Apr 2016.
    10. Carlo Giglio & Roberto Sbragia & Roberto Musmanno & Roberto Palmieri, 2021. "Cross-country learning from patents: an analysis of citations flows in innovation trajectories," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 7917-7936, September.
    11. Carlo Giglio & Gianluca Salvatore Vocaturo & Roberto Palmieri, 2023. "Patent Acquisitions in the Healthcare Industry: An Analysis of Learning Mechanisms," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(5), pages 1-13, February.
    12. 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.
    13. Kok, Holmer & Faems, Dries & de Faria, Pedro, 2020. "Ties that matter: The impact of alliance partner knowledge recombination novelty on knowledge utilization in R&D alliances," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(7).
    14. Hu, Albert Guangzhou, 2009. "The Regionalization of Knowledge Flows in East Asia: Evidence from Patent Citations Data," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 1465-1477, September.
    15. Tetsuo Wada, 2024. "Experience effects of patent examiners: an empirical study of the career length and citation patterns on triadic patents," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(10), pages 6333-6348, October.
    16. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. Krzysztof Klincewicz & Szymon Szumiał, 2022. "Successful patenting—not only how, but with whom: the importance of patent attorneys," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(9), pages 5111-5137, September.
    19. Manuel Acosta & Daniel Coronado & Esther Ferrándiz & Manuel Jiménez, 2022. "Effects of knowledge spillovers between competitors on patent quality: what patent citations reveal about a global duopoly," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 47(5), pages 1451-1487, October.
    20. Feng Zhang & Guohua Jiang, 2019. "Combination of Complementary Technological Knowledge to Generate “Hard to Imitate” Technologies," Journal of Information & Knowledge Management (JIKM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 18(02), pages 1-24, June.

    More about this item

    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:eti:dpaper:15096. 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: TANIMOTO, Toko (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rietijp.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.