Patent settlements between rivals restrain competition in many different ways. Antitrust requires them to be "proportional" in that their anti-competitive effects are commensurate with the firms' expectations about (counterfactual) patent litigation. Because these expectations are private and...

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is a recently-formed division of the Patent Office in which patents can be challenged as invalid, and which differs from federal courts in a number of respects. We investigate whether monopolist-patentees and their prospective rivals are using the PTAB...

Competitors embroiled in a patent dispute always prefer to preserve and share monopoly profits, even if the patent is likely invalid. Antitrust has come to embrace a policy that requires horizontal settlements to be "proportional" in the sense that their anticompetitive effects are commensurate...

When rivals settle a patent dispute, they prefer to preserve the full monopoly profit, even if the patent is very likely invalid. The literature advocates comparing settlement outcomes to the expected result of litigation, but has not identified a comprehensive means of doing this. We show that...

The America Invents Act of 2011 (“AIA”) created a robust administrative system—the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”)—for challenging the validity of granted patents. Congress determined that administrative correction of errors made in initial patent grants could be cheaper and...

Patent settlements between rivals restrain competition in many different ways. Antitrust requires that their anticompetitive effects are reasonably commensurate with the firms’ expectations about (counterfactual) patent litigation. Because these expectations are private and non-verifiable,...

We analyze technology investment and adoption by a product developer who faces uncertainty over whether any existing patent covers a new technology. If there is a patent, the (non-producing) patentee may choose to “lurk”—i.e., to strategically delay enforcement—hoping that the developer...