We analyze the impact of the probabilistic nature of patents on the functioning of Germany’s bifurcated patent … litigation system where infringement and validity of a patent are decided independently by different courts. We show that … bifurcation creates situations in which a patent is held infringed that is subsequently invalidated. Our conservative estimates …

careers. We combine survey information spanning the inventors' entire careers and psychometric test evidence, with patent … of inventive performance such as inventor age and a broad list of applicant institution-, technology-, patent-, and …

on patents as an incentive for innovation, the effectiveness of patents for invention disclosure, patent valuation, and … what we know about the design of patent systems. We also look at what is known about some current policy areas, including … software and business method patents, university patenting, and the growth in patent litigation …

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 …