However, patent citations explain little variance in value, suggesting limits to their use as a measure of patent quality.
Countries with higher rates of invention — as measured by patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, an indicator of patent quality — exhibit lower inequality than those with less inventive activity.
Prior art patent citations have become a popular measure of patent quality and knowledge flow between firms.
Multi-country joint ownership of a patent positively impacts patent quality, which is evidenced by their receiving statistically more forward patent citations than patents co-owned within a single country.
If an inventor wants to open her technology for others to innovate without worrying about permissions, there is no way to guarantee that the Patent Office will not issue a patent over the technology to a later applicant, an issue that goes to patent quality.
Policymakers, however, have been modifying the system in an effort to increase patent quality in the dark.
Areas of technology with higher levels of foreign-born expertise experienced much faster patent growth between 1940 and 2000 than otherwise comparable technology areas, in terms of both the number of patents and a citation-adjusted measure of patent "quality".
Just as open-source software is improved and debugged by a far-flung network of people looking at the code and spotting flaws, I.B.M. hopes that a similar process can improve patent quality.
Senator Chuck Schumer had previously proposed a similar bill, entitled the "Patent Quality Improvement Act," S. 866, on May 6 , 2013
That feedback helped us craft about a dozen valuable initiatives to enhance patent quality from clarifying the patent record, to getting the most relevant prior art before our examiners as early as possible, to comprehensively reviewing the amount of time we give our examiners to do their work, to updating how we measure patent quality, and more.
