Assessing the Impact of Patent Attributes on the Value of Discrete and Complex Innovations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how patent attributes influence the social and private value of innovations, revealing that technology type and residency status affect patent valuation, with complex and discrete innovations showing varied private value correlations.

Contribution

It introduces an empirical analysis linking patent attributes to social and private values across innovation types using Indian patent data.

Findings

Technology classification impacts patent value assessment.

Non-resident patents tend to have higher private value.

Few technologies from both categories have significant private value.

Abstract

This study assesses the degree to which the social value of patents can be connected to the private value of patents across discrete and complex innovation. The underlying theory suggests that the social value of cumulative patents is less related to the private value of patents. We use the patents applied between 1995 to 2002 and granted on or before December 2018 from the Indian Patent Office (IPO). Here the patent renewal information is utilized as a proxy for the private value of the patent. We have used a variety of logit regression model for the impact assessment analysis. The results reveal that the technology classification (i.e., discrete versus complex innovations) plays an important role in patent value assessment, and some technologies are significantly different than the others even within the two broader classifications. Moreover, the non-resident patents in India are more likely to have a higher value than the resident patents. According to the conclusions of this study, only a few technologies from the discrete and complex innovation categories have some private value. There is no evidence that patent social value indicators are less useful in complicated technical classes than in discrete ones.