Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0 Author-Name: Kyle Higham Author-Workplace-Name: Hitotsubashi University Author-Email: Author-Homepage: Author-Name: Gaetan de Rassenfosse Author-Workplace-Name: Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne Author-Email: Author-Homepage: Author-Name: Adam Jaffe Author-Workplace-Name: Brandeis University, Queensland University of Technology, NBER Author-Email: Author-Homepage: Title: Patent quality: Towards a Systematic Framework for Analysis and Measurement Abstract: The ‘quality’ of novel technological innovations is extremely variable, and the ability to measure innovation quality is essential to sensible, evidence-based policy. Patents, an often vital precursor to a commercialised innovation, share this heterogeneous quality distribution. A pertinent question then arises: How should we define and measure patent quality? Accepting that different parties have different views of, and different sets of terminologies for discussing this concept, we take a multi-dimensional view of patent quality in this work. We first test the consistency of popular post-grant outcomes that are often used as patent quality measures. Finding these measures to be generally inconsistent, we then use a raft of patent indicators available at the time of grant to dissect the characteristics of different post-grant outcomes. We find broad disagreement in the relative importance of individual characteristics between outcomes and, further, significant variation of the same across technologies within outcomes. We conclude that measurement of patent quality is highly sensitive to both the observable outcome selected and the technology type. Our findings bear concrete implications for scholarly research using patent data and policy discussions about patent quality. Classification-JEL: O30, O34 Keywords: Patent; Patent quality; Patent value; Patent citation; Patent policy; Technological impact Length: 54 pages Creation-Date: 2021-02 File-URL: https://cdm-repec.epfl.ch/iip-wpaper/WP14.pdf File-Format: application/pdf Handle: RePEc:iip:wpaper:14