Interregional Inventor Collaboration and the Commercial Value of Patented Inventions: Evidence from the U.S. Biotechnology Industry

This paper analyzes the relative importance of the spatiality of inventor collaboration links for the quality of invention. It uses patent citation and renewal data to estimate (expected) economic values for a sample of U.S. biotechnology patents, controlling for a set of inventor and owner characteristics. The investigation extends the research by differentiating the quality of knowledge flows while at the same time refining patents as a source of innovation information. The results of the clustered logistic regression and continuation ratio models provide some support for the hypothesis that interregional (non-local) collaboration results in commercially more valuable inventions relative to patents that are product of intraregional (local) collaboration. The same empirical results also indicate that (1) inter-industry (related) knowledge flows contribute to the patent value more than inter-industry (unrelated) or intra-industry knowledge flows; and (2) general purpose technologies/products as measured by citations of patented inventions received from diverse sets of industries are indicative not only of technological/scientific quality but also of the economic value of patented inventions. These results are robust in different citation-window designations, exclusion of self-citations, different regional definitions, and different patent classifications.