All Patents Great and Small: A Big Data Network Approach to Valuation

View/ Open
Issue Date
2017Author
Torrance, Andrew W.
West, Jevin
Publisher
Virginia Journal of Law and Technology
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Published Version
www.vjolt.netVersion
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2942766
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Measuring patent value is an important goal of scholars in both patent law and patent economics. However, doing so objectively, accurately, and consistently has proved exceedingly difficult. At least part of the reason for this difficulty is that patents themselves are complex documents that are difficult even for patent experts to interpret. In addition, issued patents are the result of an often long and complicated negotiation between applicant and patent office (in the United States, the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO)), resulting in an opaque "prosecution history" upon which the scope of claimed patent rights depends. In this Article, we approach the concept of patent value by using the relative positions of issued United States (U.S.) patents embedded within a comprehensive patent citation network to measure the importance of those patents within the network. Thus, we tend to refer to the "importance" of patents instead of "value," but there is good reason to believe that these two concepts share a very similar meaning.
Collections
Citation
30 Va. J.L. & Tech. 466 (2017)
Items in KU ScholarWorks are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.
We want to hear from you! Please share your stories about how Open Access to this item benefits YOU.
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Gene Concepts, Gene Talk, and Gene Patents
Torrance, Andrew W. (University of Minnesota Law School, 2010)Since the existence of a discrete unit of heredity was first proposed by Gregor Mendel, scientific concepts of the “gene” have undergone rapid evolution. Beyond obvious epistemic and operational importance to the scientific ... -
Neurobiology and Patenting Thought
Torrance, Andrew W. (University of New Hampshire School of Law, 2009)Many have argued that thought should constitute per se unpatentable subject matter, and some have even suggested that any patent claim that includes a mental step should lie outside patentability. Many courts have long ... -
Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Patents: One Experimental View of the Cathedral
Tomlinson, Bill; Torrance, Andrew W. (Yale Law School, 2011)In their seminal 1972 article, "Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral," Guido Calabresi and A. Douglas Melamed proposed an analytic framework for comparing entitlements protected ...