Are Firms Able to Take Advantage of Academic Advances?

This study uses patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (applied before 2011) to analyze the relationship among the value of patents, account information of patent-holding firms, and citations of academic papers empirically. The results are summarized as follows: First, profitable firms tend to cite papers more frequently than other firms. Second, patents that cite academic papers have more forward citations than other patents do. Third, patents that cite academic papers are cited in a wider range of technical fields than those that do not. These results imply that incorporating academic knowledge increases patent value, expands utilization range, and increases firm profitability. This situation has implications for science and technology policy. Providing public support may be important if firms with low-profit firms cannot access academic knowledge because of the lack of human and material resources.