James Watt's 1769 patent is widely supposed to have stood in the way of the development of high-pressure steam technology until it finally expired in 1800. We dispute this popular claim. We show that, although it is true that high-pressure steam technology developed only after the expiration of...

I introduce and analyze an equilibrium model of discovery, innovation, patenting and infringement. Firms that innovate must adapt complementary inputs, and are ex ante uncertain about whether adaptations will be costly and whether they will infringe other patents. If adaptation requires...

This paper examines the impact of three patent damage regimes on licensing and competition between a patentee and imitator. We focus on product patents in a differentiated, duopoly setting. Neither per-unit royalties nor fixed fees under efficient licensing are unique in equilibrium. As a...

We use structural break analysis to estimate rates of patent validity and infringement in decisions on the merits in United States Courts over 1929-2006. We separately estimate these rates for District Court and Appeals Court decisions. We find multiple structural breaks in both validity and...

This paper describes a data set built to analyze patent litigation in the United States during 1929-2006. The data include all patents in published district court and appellate court decisions in which validity and/or infringement are at issue. We collect numerous patent-specific variables and...

With its powerful mandate to unify patent law, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), established in 1982, represents an intriguing recent example of an institutional innovation with potentially broad economic consequences. Given sole responsibility for handling patent appeals and...

This paper studies the puzzle of what caused the surge in US patenting in the 1980s. I first argue that, under the standard view of patents, where value depends only on the appropriable rents created by the patent's exclusive property rights over related technologies and product markets, this...