Relationship between utilization of acquired technology by patent acquisition and subsequent patent production

Abstract

This study investigates whether the technology acquired by the patent acquisition leads to improvement of technology of the acquirer in terms of patent production by exploring the relationship between citation of the acquired patent and subsequent increase in patent production of the acquirer. A new dataset was prepared to the study by merging the US patent grant data and the US patent re-assignment data in the period 2007-2016. The result of statistical test shows that for more active organizations in self-citing acquired patents produce more subsequent patents than less active organizations after controlling the characteristics of the acquiring organization and the technology field of acquired patent.