Patents may assist trade in technology either by protecting buyers against the expropriation of the idea by third parties (the appropriation effect) or by enabling sellers to more frankly disclose the idea during the negotiation phase (the disclosure effect). We test for the presence of both...

One of the great unknowns of patent policy is how much infringement goes on, and how much of that infringement leads to enforcement of an informal or formal kind. Our representative survey of over 3700 Australian inventors estimates that 28 per cent of inventions (which were the subject of a...