

OECD report shows dramatic decline in patent quality - bane
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-09-oecd-decline-patent-quality.html

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pwg
Their statistical metric:

    
    
       The group measures patent quality by noting
       the number of citations the patent receives
       by other patents. Thus the report is saying
       that the number of new patents that wind up
       being cited by other new patents has declined,
       which means in essence, they are only
       generally useful to the original patent holders.
    

And from that measure they determine there has been a 20% drop in "citations".
What they don't state is whether they normalized their data for the increase
in size of the body of patents from which to cite. In 1990, there were less
than five million US patents, while in 2011 there are over eight million US
patents (roughly a 60% increase in volume).

Without normalizing the citation numbers against the volume increase (i.e.,
considering the effects of inflation), the cited 20% lower figure is
meaningless. It becomes an apples to oranges comparison.

