The Plant Patent Act of 1930 was the first step towards creating property rights for biological innovation: it introduced patent rights for asexually-propagated plants. This chapter uses data on plant patents and registrations of new varieties to examine whether the Act encouraged innovation....

The Plant Patent Act of 1930 was the first step towards creating property rights for biological innovation: it introduced patent rights for asexually-propagated plants. This paper uses data on plant patents and registrations of new varieties to examine whether the Act encouraged innovation....

A growing empirical literature uses patent citations as a quality-adjusted measure for innovation, despite concerns about the validity of this measure. This paper links patents with objective measures of improvements in the quality of patented inventions – measured through performance in field...

Patents are the main source of data on innovation, but there are persistent concerns that patents may be a noisy and biased measure. An important challenge arises from unobservable variation in the size of the inventive step that is covered by a patent. The count of later patents that cite a...

A growing empirical literature uses patent citations as a quality-adjusted measure for innovation, despite concerns about the validity of this measure. This paper links patents with objective measures of improvements in the quality of patented inventions – measured through performance in field...

Patents are the main source of data on innovation, but there are persistent concerns that patents may be a noisy and biased measure. An important challenge arises from unobservable variation in the size of the inventive step that is covered by a patent. The count of later patents that cite a...