Completely agree with you. I'm always frustrated when I read papers that use patents as a proxy for innovation/research. In fact, most people doing research in

Completely agree with you. I'm always frustrated when I read papers that use patents as a proxy for innovation/research. In fact, most people doing research in that area know that very well, but then, it seems there are no alternatives to patents (which are standardize, public, easy to access, and can be tracked across even centuries..).