Did Trips Spur Innovation? an Analysis of Patent Duration and Incentives to Innovate
نویسندگان
چکیده
How to structure IP laws in order to maximize social welfare by striking the right balance between incentives to innovate and access to innovation is an empirical question. It is a challenging one to answer, both because innovation is difficult to value and because changes in IP protection are rare. The 1995 TRIPS agreement provides a unique opportunity to explore this question for two reasons. First, the implementation of the agreement was uncertain until shortly before adoption, making it a plausibly exogenous change in patent duration. Second, the nature of the law change meant that the patent-duration change was heterogeneous across patent classes. Using both patent counts and citationweighted counts, I am able to exploit the TRIPS-induced law change to empirically evaluate the impact of patent duration on innovation. I find evidence for an increase in innovation due to patent-term extension following TRIPS. Both patent counts and citation-weighted counts increased more after TRIPS in those classes that received greater expected term extensions relative to classes receiving shorter extensions. While the precise calibration of innovation valuation is difficult, this Article provides the first attempt to empirically evaluate its response to a major change in patent duration from the TRIPS agreement.
منابع مشابه
Did TRIPS Spur Innovation? An Empirical Analysis of Patent Duration and Incentives to Innovate
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تاریخ انتشار 2009