We examine the relation between patent thickets and acquisitions. Patent thickets are dense webs of overlapping … litigation. We find that firms are less likely to be acquired when they are in a denser thicket comprised of many patent owners … it can have these costs imposed on it by the acquirer. Importantly, our results are not explained by patent count, patent …

patent protection may encourage horizontal merger and affect the consumers adversely by increasing product …We challenge the common wisdom that patent protection (compared to no or weak patent protection) makes the consumers …-market concentration compared to the situation with patent protection. Hence, even if we ignore the innovation inducing role of patent …