Patent citations, again

One finds an interesting assertion in a post at missenginerd:

The firm [1790 Analytics] examined patents filed by 25 organizations that had been granted the highest number of patents from 1997 to 2010 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It found that IEEE journals and conference proceedings received more than 127 000 patent citations—nearly three times the number of any other publisher.

To unpack this, one gathers that the set of patents investigated are those of the 25 organizations that got the most issued patents from the USPTO between 1997 and 2010. [IBM would be at the top of that list.] IBM workers, and workers for Microsoft et al., are more likely to be going to IEEE meetings, and publishing in IEEE journals, than in journals in biology, chemistry, or physics. What result did one expect?

One might like to know "who" was citing the IEEE more, the patent applicant (1449 form) or the USPTO (892 form). IPBiz bets on the applicant.