Analysis of the Relationship between Patent Litigation and Citation: Subdivision of Citations

Recent examples of patent litigation show the evidence of firms strategic patent use. Thus forecasting patent litigation becomes a greater priority. Patent citations have been prevalent in its usage in analyzing business environment as diverse patent indicators or a tool to predict patent litigation. However, most previous research has considered only direct patent citations. In order to overcome the limitation, this study analyzes patent litigation quantitatively through three kinds of patent citations: direct, indirect and latent citation, and empirically analyzed the relationship between these citations and patent litigation between plaintiff and defendant firms based on U.S. patent documents and patent litigation information. Consequently, this study found that the indirect citation is more by 7% than direct citations to patent litigation. In addition, latent citation is 8% higher in frequency compared with the number of litigations in in/direct citation relationship. Therefore, these results indicate that various approach for patent citation can provide more information for forecasting patent litigation.