We use an exogenous change in German Federal law to examine how entrepreneurial support and the ownership of patent rights influence academic entrepreneurship. In 2002, the German Federal Government enacted a major reform called Knowledge Creates Markets that set up new infrastructure to...

Classical patent literature assumes that patents grant well-defined legal rights to exclude others from practicing an invention. In this scenario, start-up companies benefit from the exclusive right to commercialize patent-protected inventions and the certification effect of patents which...