. Accordingly, this paper offers an empirical comparison of patents in relation to the award of prizes for technological innovation …Such institutions as patent systems cannot be well understood without an assessment of technological creativity in …. The data set comprises a sample of patents, as well as exhibits and prizes at annual industrial fairs in Massachusetts …

pharmaceutical patent protection alone does not stimulate domestic innovation, as estimated by the US patent awards (both raw counts …Research on the effects of patent protection on innovation and technology transfer in the cross-country pharmaceutical … either. Imports, however, did flourish. Second, national patent law implementation demonstrates conditional importance for …

Patent counts are very imperfect measures of innovative output. This paper discusses how additional data-the number of … years a patent is renewed and the number of countries in which protection for the same invention is sought - can be used to … improve on counts in studies which require a measure of the extent of innovation. A simple renewal based weighting scheme is …

. The purpose is to document the ways in which patent systems are products of battles over the economic surplus from … innovation. The features of these systems take shape as interests at different points in the production chain seek advantage in …-style patent systems with all their imperfections have come to dominate other methods of encouraging inventive activity. The essays …

questions. The economy consists of many industries and firms engaged in cumulative (step-by-step) innovation. IPR policy … past innovations. With full patent protection, followers can catch up to the leader in their industry either by making the … same innovation(s) themselves or by making some pre-specified payments to the technological leaders. We prove the existence …

fertility of an innovation in generating more innovations cannot be observed. The menu of patent scope can be implemented with …It may be advantageous to provide a variety of kinds of patent protection to heterogenous innovations. Innovations … protection in order to be encouraged. We model the problem of designing an optimal patent menu (scope and length) when the …

Does an expansion of patent scope induce more innovative effort by firms? This article provides evidence on this … question by examining firm responses to the Japanese patent reforms of 1988. Interviews with practitioners suggest the reforms … significantly expanded the scope of patent rights in Japan, but that the average response in terms of additional R&D effort and …

How do non-practicing entities ("Patent Trolls") impact innovation and technological progress? Although this question …", who exploit the patent system to extract rents and thereby hurt innovation. We employ unprecedented access to NPE …-derived patent and financial data, as well as a novel model that guides our data analysis. We find that NPEs acquire patents from …

This paper studies a simple model of experimentation and innovation. Our analysis suggests that patents may improve the … equilibria). In contrast to patents, subsidies to experimentation, research, or innovation cannot typically achieve this … project to implement. A successful innovation can be copied by other firms. Symmetric equilibria (where actions do not depend …

existence of strong patent laws encourage innovation? And 2) May patent laws influence the direction - as opposed to the rate …What is the optimal system of intellectual property rights to encourage innovation? Empirical evidence from economic … to address problems with the current patent system: 3) How do patent pools, as a mechanism to mitigate litigation risks …