Abstract
Analysis of patent citations is a core methodology in the study of knowledge diffusion. However, citations made by patent examiners have not been separately reported, adding unknown noise to the data. We leverage a recent change in the reporting of patent data showing citations added by examiners. The magnitude is high: two-thirds of citations on the average patent are inserted by examiners. Furthermore, 40% of all patents have all citations added by examiners. We analyze the distribution of examiner and inventor citations with respect to self-citation, distance, technology overlap, and vintage. Results indicate that inferences about inventor knowledge using pooled citations may suffer from bias or overinflated significance levels.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 774-779 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Review of Economics and Statistics |
| Volume | 88 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2006 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
- Economics and Econometrics
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