Assessing the Quality of Financial Technology Patents Through the Development of a Patent Quality Index for Comparing Jurisdictions, Technical Domains, and Leading Organizations

Abstract

This article examines the issue of patent quality in the Financial Technology (FinTech) field and proposes a way of assessing patent quality through the development of a patent quality index based on key indicators proposed in the literature. The index uses a sample of 16 387 patents in the FinTech field registered over 20 years to assess the average quality of patents. To illustrate the utility of the index, the 1) top geographic jurisdictions, 2) top technical domains, and 3) leading organizations were analyzed to map out patterns of intellectual property registration and protection. This article provides significant insights on leading patent jurisdictions, illustrating the growing impact on FinTech of jurisdictions, such as the Republic of Korea, and the focus of patents within the USA in particular domains, such as payment protocols, e-commerce, and identification mechanisms. This article contributes to both theory and practice through the development and validation of a novel patent quality index, which has significant utility to multiple stakeholders and advances knowledge on assessing patent quality. Furthermore, by surfacing a positive association between the quality of an organization's FinTech patents and earnings, the article illustrates the value to organizations in developing high-quality patents in this field.