Uses unexpired patent to re-evaluate innovation performance by h-index and h-core indicators

The main objective of this study is to assist scholars and practitioners by proposing a practical and replicable approach to extract substantial patent count and patent's cited times without abusing the data to re-evaluate productivity and impact of innovation performance. There have been few quantitative patent indicators concerning the validity of patent; therefore, the study discusses the methodological issues in interpreting h-index and h-core indicators with a normalized weighting score of rate of valid patents and rate of valid patent cited that can be used to weight the innovation performance. Our results show that valid patents have obtained higher rates compared to expired patents in average times of cited by whole patents, times of cited by valid patents and times of cited in 2012. The older valid patents in semiconductor are, the more valuable the patent may be. The impact of older valid patents is reflected on their average of times cited. After adjusting the weighted factors, the study further updates the ranking of the leading companies in semiconductor and reveals that Micron and Semi. Energy Lab. have achieved much better performance in innovation productivity and impact as the leading company in innovation. TI, AMD, Samsung, TSMC, Hitachi, Panasonic, Sony, and Seiko Epson are seen as innovation-growing companies; and IBM, Toshiba, Intel, NEC, Mitsubishi, UMC, Fujitsu, Infineon, Renesas, and Hynix Semi can be categorized as innovation-declining companies.