EPO vs. USPTO Citation Lags

Fabio Montobbio and Emanuele Bacchiocchi

No 161, KITeS Working Papers from KITeS, Centre for Knowledge, Internationalization and Technology Studies, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy

Abstract: This paper estimates the diffusion and obsolescence of technological knowledge by technological field, country and type of institutions that generates it. We use two comparable samples of patents and patent citations from the NBER U.S. Patent Citations Dataset (based on patents from the US Patent Office) and from the EP Cespri Dataset (based on patents from the European Patent Office). Using a quasi-structural model, as proposed by Caballero and Jaffe (1993) and discussed in Hall et al. (2001), We test whether the observed processes of knowledge diffusion and obsolescence reflect the specific institutional mechanism generating them. Results show that at the USPTO there are more citations per patent due to the different rules governing citation practices and that their median lag is twice as large relatively to the citations at the EPO. We also find that the relative properties of the citation frequencies indifferent technological fields change according to the patent office considered.

Keywords: Patent citations; Knowledge flows; Spillovers; Diffusion; Patent Examiners. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O30 O33 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2004-09, Revised 2004-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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