Indeed, the researchers undermined their own argument, even:
> ... it is notable that contrary to their main results, Fort et al. find that the stock market value of the average patent has actually fallen over time.
Their methodologies are very indirect and yield contradictory results.
Trying to decide if a patent is important by looking at the evolution of word use doesn't sound robust, nor does looking at the stock market. When Google invented the transformer algorithm, I don't think there was a sudden jump in their stock price. There are lots of papers and people can't evaluate their value immediately like that. Stock prices move in response to earnings, not patents or papers. I don't remember ever hearing about a sudden stock price jump because a patent was filed.
There's lots of other questionable stuff in this argument. How are they defining researcher, for one? For US tax purposes it's common to define all software development as R&D. If they're using similar data then the huge growth of the software industry would make it appear like research productivity has fallen.
> ... it is notable that contrary to their main results, Fort et al. find that the stock market value of the average patent has actually fallen over time.
Their methodologies are very indirect and yield contradictory results.
Trying to decide if a patent is important by looking at the evolution of word use doesn't sound robust, nor does looking at the stock market. When Google invented the transformer algorithm, I don't think there was a sudden jump in their stock price. There are lots of papers and people can't evaluate their value immediately like that. Stock prices move in response to earnings, not patents or papers. I don't remember ever hearing about a sudden stock price jump because a patent was filed.
There's lots of other questionable stuff in this argument. How are they defining researcher, for one? For US tax purposes it's common to define all software development as R&D. If they're using similar data then the huge growth of the software industry would make it appear like research productivity has fallen.