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Many studies rely on patent citations to measure intellectual heritage and impact. In this article, we show that the nature of patent citations has changed dramatically in recent years. Today, a small minority of patent applications are generating a large majority of patent citations, and the mean technological similarity between citing and cited patents has fallen considerably. We replicate several well‐known studies in industrial organization and innovation economics and demonstrate how generalized assumptions about the nature of patent citations have misled the field.

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Competition between firms to invent and patent an idea, or “patent racing,” has been much discussed in theory, but seldom analyzed empirically and never at scale. This article introduces an empirical way to identify patent races, and provides the first broad-based view of them in the real world. It reveals that patent races are common, particularly in information-technology fields. The article then analyzes the effect of winning a patent race, showing that patent race winners do significantly more follow-on innovation, and their follow-on research is more similar to what was covered by the patent. (JEL CODES: O34, O32, O31)

No abstract