We investigate the causal effect of patent rights on cumulative innovation, using large-scale data that approximate the … patent universe in its technological and economic variety. We introduce a novel instrumental variable for patent invalidation … that exploits personnel scarcity in post-grant opposition at the European Patent Office. We find that patent invalidation …

. Where licensing fails, follow-on innovation is blocked unless firms gain FTO through patent invalidation. Using large …We study the blocking effect of patents on follow-on innovation by others. We posit that follow-on innovation requires … freedom to operate (FTO), which firms typically obtain through a license from the patentee holding the original innovation …

of standards, enhanced with information on firms' engagement in patenting and publishing. We find that 26% of innovation … limited to, publishing findings in scientific journals, patenting new technologies, and contributing to developing standards …. While the individual effects of engaging in the listed practices on firm innovation are well-understood, the existing …

We study the causal impact of invalidating marginally valid patents during post-grant opposition at the European Patent … Office on affected inventors' subsequent patenting. We exploit exogenous variation in invalidation by leveraging the … participation of a patent's original examiner in the opposition division as an instrument. We find a disciplinary effect of …

type of independent patent claims, we show an increase in the annual share of process claims of about 25 percentage points … (from below 10% in 1920). This rise in process intensity is not limited to a few patent classes but can be observed across a … shorter than product claims; but this gap has narrowed since the 1970s. These patterns suggest that the patent breadth and …

invention (through patents) and the clinical trials data submitted for market approval (through data exclusivity). Patent … market exclusivity on the likelihood of drug commercialization. The effect is largely driven by patent invalidations early in …

functioning of the contemporary patent system. We find that patenting firms are being less confronted with imitation. The effect …From a firm’s perspective two competing forces are driving the decision to invest in innovation. On the one hand …, innovative performance is an important driver of profitability and growth. On the other hand, investments in innovation suffer …

quality) than their European counterparts after patent rights for software inventions were introduced. We then introduce a … theoretical model that accounts for substitution and complementarity between patenting and publishing as well as for the direction …