This paper uses renewal data to estimate the value of U.S. patents, controlling for patent and owner characteristics. Estimates of U.S. patent value are substantially larger than estimates for European patents, however, the ratio of US patent value to R&D for firms is only about 3%. Patents issued to small patentees are much less valuable than those issued to large corporations, perhaps reflect...

OBJECTIVES To determine the evolution of patents in immunology, as a result of research and innovation in the years 2004-2011. DESIGN The search for patents published internationally in immunology was made by using the SCOPUSTM database. SCOPUS gives information about over 23 million patents. The extracted data from patents were: inventors and applicants; their nationalities; sections, classe...

Introduction Modern designers of graphical user interfaces, or GUIs, have obtained design patent protection for creative computer software displays, a realm previously limited to copyright. The difference in protection is important. Design patents do not require copying, while copyright does. Design patents do not have a fair use defense, while copyright does. Design patents do not exclude prot...

Japan’s hybrid system during the Meiji era of technological modernization provides a useful laboratory for examining whether complementary mechanisms to patents induce innovation. Patents were introduced in 1885 and by 1911 1.2 million mostly non-pecuniary prizes were awarded at 8,503 competitions. Prizes increased patent outcomes by 35 percent, a conservative causal estimate based on the timin...

We present a dynamic model where the accumulation of patents generates an increasing number of claims on sequential innovation. We compare innovation activity under three regimes –patents, no-patents, and patent pools– and find that none of them can reach the first best. We find that the first best can be reached through a decentralized tax-subsidy mechanism, by which innovators receive a subsi...

Pharmaceuticals have provided the most compelling case for patents. The special status of drug patents is being eroded, however, by spiraling health care costs, which put downward pressures on patent premiums, and scientific developments, which stand to erode the value of patents by shrinking markets for individual drugs and limiting entry of generic producers. These changes call for a reexamin...

To assess worldwide development of nanotechnology, this paper compares the numbers and contents of nanotechnology patents in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), European Patent Office (EPO), and Japan Patent Office (JPO). It uses the patent databases as indicators of nanotechnology trends via bibliographic analysis, content map analysis, and citation network analysis on nanot...