It is more than 25 years since the authors of the Yale and Carnegie surveys studied how firms seek to protect the rents from innovation. In this paper, we revisit that question using a nationally representative sample of firms over the period 2008-2015, with the goal of updating and extending a...

The 2006 Supreme Court ruling in eBay vs. MercExchange marked a sea change in U.S. patent policy. The eBay decision removed the presumption of injunctive relief. Subsequent legal and policy changes reduced the costs of challenging patent validity and narrowed the scope of patentable subject...

Many standard setting organizations (SSOs) require participants to disclose patents that might be infringed by implementing a proposed standard, and commit to license their “essential” patents on terms that are at least fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND). Data from these SSO...

Many standard setting organizations (SSOs) require participants to disclose patents that might be infringed by implementing a proposed standard, and commit to license their “essential” patents on terms that are at least fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND). Data from these SSO...

This paper measures the technological significance of voluntary standard setting organizations (SSOs) by examining citations to patents disclosed in the standard setting process. We find that SSO patents are cited far more frequently than a set of control patents, and that SSO patents receive...