"Patents are not only powerful tools in technological competition, they have also been conceived and structured as a potentially rich source of technical information by national and multi-national patent systems. In practice, however, learning from patent publications appears to play a negligible role in the corporate learning process concerning new technical developments. For explaining this apparent paradox, a theoretical framework is developed in this article for analysing acceptance and knowledge transfer of technical information in patent documents. Along the three dimensions of "knowledge source", "knowledge category", and "organisational level", the model highlights the role of tacit knowledge in the knowledge transfer process and the deficiencies existing in current systems. The importance of a patent gatekeeper as a key person for effecting informal technical communication in an organisation is emphasised."