Given the growing size of patent databases and portfolios, scholars and practitioners alike need metrics to help them in weighting patent counts or in ranking patents to focus on the most important ones. The main objective of this paper is to help them in this task with a practical and replicable approach. The discriminating criterion chosen is the potential market for the patented invention and the approach uses five different patent features (forward citations, grant decisions, families, renewals, and oppositions) that (1) have been found positively correlated with the value of patents in the literature, (2) can be extracted from patent databases, and (3) could inform on the existence of a potential market for the invention. The paper therefore discusses the main methodological issues in measuring and interpreting these metrics over a large international dataset and proposes one approach to extract from the different measures a consistent score that can be used to weight or rank patents. AbstractGiven the growing size of patent databases and portfolios, scholars and practitioners alike need metrics to help them in weighting patent counts or in ranking patents to focus on the most important ones. The main objective of this paper is to help them in this task with a practical and replicable approach. The discriminating criterion chosen is the potential market for the patented invention and the approach uses five different patent features (forward citations, grant decisions, families, renewals, and oppositions) that (1) have been found positively correlated with the value of patents in the literature, (2) can be extracted from patent databases, and (3) could inform on the existence of a potential market for the invention. The paper therefore discusses the main methodological issues in measuring and interpreting these metrics over a large international dataset and proposes one approach to extract from the different measures a consistent score that can be used to weight or rank patents.

Under what conditions does digital technology adoption increase cross location knowledge flows within firms? We investigate this question by studying the impact of adopting basic Internet access on cross-location knowledge flows within the same firm. We construct a large data set of Internet adoption and patent citations among dyadic pairs of firm-locations between 1992-1998. We find that when both locations in the pair adopt basic Internet there is an increase in the likelihood of a citation between the citing and (potential) cited location. In contrast, we find no significant effect of Internet adoption at only the citing location. We further study how this effect varies according to the proximity of the research activities between the source and recipient of knowledge and specialization of the research activities within the recipient. We find that the likelihood of a citation increases more after dyadic Internet adoption when the pair is working in similar research areas and when the research areas in the citing location are less specialized. These results, which are robust to a range of robustness analyses, suggest that digital technologies such as Internet connectivity are able to facilitate knowledge flows between locations only when they share a common knowledge base.

The size of patent applications has doubled over the past two decades, resulting in a dramatic surge in patent offices' workload all over the world. This paper investigates the sources of this inflation in claims and pages for EPO applications. Four hypotheses are quantitatively tested: the diffusion of national drafting practices, the complexification of research activities, the emergence of new sectors, and patenting strategies. The results first reveal major differences across countries in patent drafting styles, especially between Civil and Common Law countries, the latter being characterized by much larger patents. Second, the success of the PCT route is leading to the harmonization of drafting styles worldwide toward the U.S. model, suggesting that the verbosity of patent drafters is not only due to the greediness of patentees but also to changes in patent systems. Finally, filing strategies, emerging sectors, and technological complexity are also important factors affecting the voluminosity of patents. The size of patent applications has doubled over the past two decades, resulting in a dramatic surge in patent offices' workload all over the world and raising serious concerns over patent quality standards. This paper investigates the sources of this inflation in claims and pages for EPO applications. Four hypotheses are quantitatively tested: the diffusion of national drafting practices, the complexification of research activities, the emergence of new sectors, and filing strategies. The results first reveal major differences across countries in patent drafting styles, especially between Civil and Common Law countries, the latter being characterized by much larger patents. Second, the success of the PCT route is leading to the harmonization of drafting styles worldwide toward the U.S. model, suggesting that the verbosity of patent drafters is not only due to the greediness of patentees but also to changes in patent systems. Finally, filing strategies, emerging sectors, and technological complexity are also important factors affecting the voluminosity of patents.Keywords: Patent voluminosity, IP strategy, Claim drafting, Patent systems JEL classification codes: K1; K3; L1; O3 1 We gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions we received from Eugenio Archontopoulos, Wolfram Förster and Niels Stevensborg of the EPO, Robert M.