Pinpointing Industrial Invention: An Exploration of Quantitative Methods for the Analysis of Patents

Abstract

In the course of animated debates, specialists have slowly come to recognise that the study of patents can provide a limited but irreplaceable contribution to the knowledge of technical change.1 Our aim in this chapter is not to discuss the general worth of this sort of study but rather to explore the use of co-word analysis to improve the study of the contents of a large number of patents.