firms may protect their inventions by means of intellectual property rights, such as patents. By taking out a patent … of patents on the dissemination of R&D findings is, however, insignificant. Therefore, we conclude that patent … functioning of the contemporary patent system. We find that patenting firms are being less confronted with imitation. The effect …

plant size. We further find lagged negative effects on the (citation-weighted) number of filed patents. …

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 opposition at the European Patent Office. We find that patent invalidation …

We study the blocking effect of patents on follow-on innovation by others. We posit that follow-on innovation requires …. Where licensing fails, follow-on innovation is blocked unless firms gain FTO through patent invalidation. Using large …-scale data from post-grant oppositions at the European Patent Office, we find that patent invalidation increases follow …

remaining career. We use European patent data for a period of 32 years for 1240 German inventors. The patent data are linked … of inventors applying for the first patent after completing education or being in the highest quartile of citations … received for the first patent. The higher career productivity seems to be a consequence of higher individual ability rather …

-ups with experienced inventors holding a patent at the time of receiving the first round of investment produce the largest …