Evaluating the Use of Non-Patent Reference for linking Science and Technology
Pei-Chun Lee1,2, Hsin-Ning Su3, Te-Yi Chan1
1
Science and Technology Policy Research and Information Center, National Applied Research
laboratories, 14 F., No. 106, Sec. 2, He-Ping E. Rd., Taipei, 106, Taiwan.
2
Graduate Institute of Technology and Innovation Management, National Cheng Chi University, 64,
Sec. 2, Chih-nan Rd., Wenshan, Taipei, 116, Taiwan
3
Graduate Institute of Technology & Innovation Management, National Chung Hsing University, 250
KuoKuang Rd., Taichung, 402, Taiwan
Non-patent references in patent documents have been widely used as an indicator of
science-technology links. Some proposed that citation links between patents and
papers are, if not explicitly, at least implicitly viewed as an indication of the
contribution of science to technology.
Literatures have suggested the systematic noises in non-patent references comprise:
1) non-patent references are usually made by patent examiner rather than by the
applicant.
2) non-patent references are often included merely to restrict and modify claims, not
to reflect the scientific knowledge upon which the patented invention builds.
3) Patent examiners tend to restrict their reading to a narrow range of specialities and
to be relatively unfamiliar
The disclosed systematic noises in non-patent references are made by patent examiner
and the noise investigated by literatures are based on limited number of patents. To
further verify the systematic noise by full-spectrum analysis, this study scans USPTO
patents between 1976 and 2010 and retrieves the most highly cited non-patent
references in USPTO, and compare to the times these non-patent reference are cited
by scientific papers in Web of Science database.
It is found in this study that these patents which are highly cited by patents are not
necessary to be highly cited by scientific papers. The citation discrepancy between
patent and scientific paper have strongly correlated to the way how citation is created,
namely examiner-based citation or scientist-based citation.
Therefore, it is suggested that there is no clear direct link between a patent and the
scientific paper it cites, and the use of non-patent reference to investigate knowledge
flow from science to technology maybe biased. However, the evidence provided here
is suggestive rather than conclusive.
Selected Reference:
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Policy, 29 (3): 409–434.
2) GRUPP, H., SCHMOCH, U. (1992), Perception of scientification as measured by referencing
between patents and papers. In: H. GRUPP (Ed.), Dynamics of Science-Based Innovation.
Springer-Verlag, Berlin, pp. 73–128
3) NARIN, F., HAMILTON, K. S., OLIVASTRO, D. (1997), The increasing linkage between US
technology and public science, Research Policy, 26 (3) : 317–330.
4) NARIN, F., NOMA, E. (1985), Is technology becoming science? Scientometrics, 7 (3–6) : 369–
381.
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comparison, Scientometrics, 41 (1–2) : 51–59.
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science: An assessment of citation linkages between patents and research papers, Scientometrics, 47
(2) : 389–412.
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