The Re-applicability Explore of Lotka's Law in Patent Documents

Abstract

Lotka's Law has always been attracting much attention in academia ever since its appearance and its applicability in literature has already gained verification. On the basic of former studies, this paper works at re-testing the applicability of Lotka's Law according to the massive data of the distribution of inventor productivity in patent literature. The result proves that Lotka's Law shows favourable applicability in patent literature. Meanwhile, it reveals that power-law distribution which dominates the three basic laws of literature metrology is also applicable to patent documents.