Prior literature documents mixed evidence about how research and development activities affect corporate creditworthiness. We investigate whether publicly available patent information is incrementally useful in assessing the benefits and risks of corporate innovation from bondholders'...

Patent thickets, a phenomenon of fragmented ownership of overlapping patent rights, hamper firms' commercialization of patents and thus deliver asset pricing implications. We show that firms with deeper patent thickets are involved in more patent litigations, launch fewer new products, and...