Estimating the Gains from Trade in the Market for Innovation: Evidence from the Transfer of Patents

The "market for innovation" -- the sale and licensing of patents -- is an often discussed source of incentives to invest in R&D. This article presents and estimates a model of the transfer and renewal of patents that, under some assumptions, allows us to quantify the gains resulting from the transfer of patents in the market for innovation. The gains from trade measure the benefits of reallocating the ownership of a patent from the original inventor to a new owner for whom the patent has a higher value. In addition, we study the effect that lowering the costs of technology transfer has on the proportion of patents traded and the gains from trade.