Regional innovation measured by patent data – does quality matter?

Patent data play an important role as indicators of inventive and innovative activity across regions. This paper examines if the geographical distribution changes and in what direction if patent data are quality-adjusted. A quality index is constructed by means of factor analysis on the indicators forward citations and backward citations, family size and opposition incidence. Patent data over Swedish regions 1982-1999 are used to examine the distribution. The paper examines how the distribution has changed over time in the aggregate and on a technology-by-technology basis. When accounting for quality, patents become much more geographically concentrated than raw patents granted. Moreover, both concentrations have increased over time. Of the quality indicators, backward citations and family size seem to contribute most to concentration.