Asymmetric technological distance measure based on language model

ABSTRACT

This article introduces a novel technological distance measure between companies based on their patent portfolios. We describe the technological position or characteristics of companies by applying the framework of language modelling technique in information retrieval on their patent portfolios. The proposed novel approach is an asymmetric measure and better captures the technological characteristic of a company and hence is a more accurate distance measure.

KEYWORDS:

• Distance measure
• patent
• language model

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• O30
• O31
• O39

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by JSPS KAKENHI [Grant Number 17K03659].