Cumulative innovation is central to economic growth. Do patent rights facilitate or impede such follow-on innovation? This paper studies the effect of removing patent protection through court invalidation on the subsequent research related to the focal patent, as measured by later citations. We...

We study how fragmentation of patent rights (‘patent thickets’) and the formation of the Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affected the duration of patent disputes, and thus the speed of technology diffusion through licensing. We develop a model of patent litigation which...

In many industries broad cross-license agreements are considered a useful method to obtain freedom to operate and to avoid patent litigation. In this paper I study the previously neglected dynamic trade-off between litigating and cross-licensing that firms face to protect their intellectual...

We study how the market for innovation affects enforcement of patent rights. We show that patent transactions arising from comparative advantages in commercialization increase litigation, but trades driven by advantages in patent enforcement reduce it. Using data on trade and litigation of...