type of independent patent claims, we show an increase in the annual share of process claims of about 25 percentage points … (from below 10% in 1920). This rise in process intensity is not limited to a few patent classes but can be observed across a … shorter than product claims; but this gap has narrowed since the 1970s. These patterns suggest that the patent breadth and …

We study the causal impact of invalidating marginally valid patents during post-grant opposition at the European Patent … participation of a patent's original examiner in the opposition division as an instrument. We find a disciplinary effect of … invalidation: Affected inventors file 20% fewer patent applications in the decade after the decision. This effect is entirely …

From a firm’s perspective two competing forces are driving the decision to invest in innovation. On the one hand …, innovative performance is an important driver of profitability and growth. On the other hand, investments in innovation suffer … firms may protect their inventions by means of intellectual property rights, such as patents. By taking out a patent …

otherwise visible to society. We develop a structural model of initial and follow-on innovation to determine the effects of such … a shift in disclosure on overall welfare in industries characterized by cumulative innovation. We find that while … significant decline in follow-on innovation. …

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 …

. While the individual effects of engaging in the listed practices on firm innovation are well-understood, the existing … sample of innovation-active firms from the German Community Innovation Survey, which includes information on the development … of standards, enhanced with information on firms' engagement in patenting and publishing. We find that 26% of innovation …

. Where licensing fails, follow-on innovation is blocked unless firms gain FTO through patent invalidation. Using large …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 …

We analyze the duration of the patent examination process at the EuropeanPatent Office (EPO). Our data contain … information related to the patent’seconomic and technical relevance, EPO capacity and workload as well as novelcitation measures … the patent grant by the examiner or an actual patent grant.Highly cited applications are approved faster by the EPO than …

invention (through patents) and the clinical trials data submitted for market approval (through data exclusivity). Patent … market exclusivity on the likelihood of drug commercialization. The effect is largely driven by patent invalidations early in …

quality) than their European counterparts after patent rights for software inventions were introduced. We then introduce a …