The Sources of Knowledge and the Value of Academic Patents

This paper aims at contributing to the literature on the determinants of patent value in two respects. It first puts forward new potential determinants of patent value which are mainly related to the identification of the institutional sources of knowledge and the geographical scope of patenting strategy. Second, it aims at validating the traditional and new determinants of patent value with academic patents. The empirical analysis focuses on 208 patent families applied by six main Belgian Universities. The patent value is approximated by the number of forward patent citations. The estimates confirm the role of most traditional determinants of patent value (e.g., backward citation and family size). Further, the new indicators underline the importance of identifying the institutional sources of knowledge. They provide a more in-depth view on the way non patent citations, backward patent citations, co-assignees, and the geographical scope for protection determine patent value. Policy implications emerge from these results, such as the benefit of local and international collaboration between public research organisations and the need to convince academic researchers with a high scientific profile in terms of publications to crystallize their tacit knowledge into high value academic patents.