Patents as a metric to record innovation

Researchers at the University of Oxford have used complicated data mining algorithms to investigate the nature of innovation. In order to do this, they utilized the record of patents held by the USPTO.

This is important because it establishes patents as a mechanism for recording history, through inventions and discoveries which have advanced society forward. Since most, if not all, of the major inventions in American history have been protected under the patent system, this is an effective way of measuring technological progress, from the lightbulb all the way up to the smartphone.

The US Patent Office uses an intricate system to record patents, wherein patents are stored by a number that specifies if and how each invention uses prior technologies. Thereby, the researchers were able to gain an understanding of the flow of technology from one to another, leading to more and more new innovations. They were interesting in studying "to what extent invention is the refinement of existing combinations of technologies and to what extent it is the result of new combinations of technologies" (Tech Review). 

Their findings were extremely intriguing. They determined that whereas 40 percent of inventions were on the basis of already existing combinations of technology, an entire 60 percent of new inventions are based on new combinations of technology. This is hugely important because it indicates to us that most of inventions that are happening are still on the basis of ingenuity and creativity. The patent process has recorded this creativity and gives us the ability to study how inventors were coming up with new, brilliant ideas.

Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/528436/data-mining-200-years-of-patent-office-records-to-reveal-the-nature-of-invention/