This paper analyzes firms' choices regarding the geographic scope of patent protection within the European patent system. We develop an econometric model at the patent level to quantify the impact of office fees and translation costs on firms' decision to validate a patent in a particular...

This paper investigates how patent applications and grants held by new ventures improve their ability to attract venture capital (VC) financing. We argue that investors are faced with considerable uncertainty and therefore rely on patents as signals when trying to assess the prospects of...

We analyze the duration of the patent examination process at the European Patent Office (EPO). Our data contain information related to the patent's economic and technical relevance, EPO capacity and workload as well as novel citation measures which are derived from the EPO's search reports. In...

We investigate the causal effect of patent rights on cumulative innovation, using large-scale data that approximate the patent universe in its technological and economic variety. We introduce a novel instrumental variable for patent invalidation that exploits personnel scarcity in post-grant...

We examine how collaborator loss affects knowledge workers in corporate R&D. We argue that such a loss affects the remaining collaborators not only by reducing their team-specific capital (as argued in the prior literature) but also by increasing their bargaining power over the employer, who is...

Standard-essential patents (SEPs) have become a key element of technical coordination in standard-setting organizations. Yet, in many cases, it remains unclear whether a declared SEP is truly standard-essential. To date, there is no automated procedure that allows for a scalable and objective...

We study the blocking effect of patents on follow-on innovation by others. We posit that follow-on innovation requires freedom to operate (FTO), which firms typically obtain through a license from the patentee holding the original innovation. Where licensing fails, follow-on innovation is...