Determinants of Patent Citations: A Case of Indian Patents Registered With the Us Patent Office

This paper aims to answer the question “What factors influence patent citation?”, as this metric is frequently used as an indicator of the technological value of a patent. Our analysis is based on 6,777 patents granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to Indian assignees from 1985 to 2015. Our objective is to examine whether patent attributes, including priority country, patent scope, claims, family size, inventor size, prime inventor, citation lag, technological variability, and grant lag, have an impact on the frequency of patent citations. We have employed a novel factor, “priority country”, in our study to determine the number of times a patent is cited. The empirical finding suggests that patents from developed priority countries like the United States have a greater impact on patent citation frequency than those from developing priority countries like India. Similarly, US-origin prime inventor patents have a positive impact on the frequency of forward citations, whereas the impact of citation is negative if the prime inventor is from India. Further, the study finds citation lag, grant lag, technological variability, claims, and family size also significantly influence patent citation frequencies.