HACKER Q&A
📣 harshaangeri

Is patent filing trends a lead or lag indicator of tech trends?


Patent databases are a great source for understanding how a particular technology is evolving and what companies are investing real dollars behind it. Patent filing has exponentially grown showing increased belief in it.

However given time frames of years involved in filling to publishing to granting a patent does this data help as a lead indicator or lag indicator? Products take a long time too to get released so is the granting time in some sense irrelevant? Does the answer vary by industry... long cycle industries like aircraft vs short cycle like mobiles?

  👤 jschveibinz Accepted Answer ✓
Independent of other trends, I am of the opinion that patent applications will reduce as a function of the digital transformation and the speed of technology turnover. Software startups, including university-based startups, aren’t filing patents because they are not valuable, they expose too much and they are generally not successful.