Why patents have lower citation on non-patent references?: A case study from Taiwan

In the recent years, we have witnessed the increasing on importance of researches in patent analysis, especially in non-patent references (NPRS), as patents become the key intangible assets of enterprises. While many people want to know the degree of linkage between the science and technology through the analysis of NPRS, some of the scholars did show that the number of NPR citations is positively correlated with the degree of science linkage. Other related studies also investigate the issue mainly by looking at the process of how science is transformed into technology. Nevertheless, there remain a lot of questions, such as how the characteristics of technologies in patent and the types of patent affect the number of NPRs, which are still unknown to both academia and industrial practitioners.