A method for identifying hot patents and linking them to government-funded scientific research

This paper is designed to contribute to the innovation literature by describing a method for identifying important, high-impact technologies. To this end, this paper discusses a patent citation analysis technique designed to identify patents whose impact on recent technology developments is particularly strong. These patents are defined as hot patents. This paper also examines links between hot patents and scientific research funded by different government agencies. Our results indicate that patents that cite scientific papers funded by government agencies are more likely to become hot patents than patents that do not have such a citation link to publicly funded scientific research. Our results also reveal how hot patents can be used to demonstrate the geographical breadth of influence of an individual government agency's funding of science. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.