In this chapter, we explore the extent to which universities and other nonprofit research institutes currently participate in the secondary market for patents. We document 220 assignments, involving a total of 544 U.S. patent assets, that appear to represent arms-length patent sales by...

After 10 years analysing the patent market, we have some very direct advice this year. If you are in-house counsel, to borrow a line from Samuel L Jackson: “Hold onto your butts.” These next few years are going to be tough. If you have not already signed up with a defensive aggregator such...

“Patents are unique! You can’t get a market price for them because they are ‘uncomparable (sic)’!” “The average price of a patent is the worst thing that has ever happened to patents.” “The model can never be accurate enough.” These are all things that we have heard about why...

We test empirically whether purchased patents that are litigated fare better or worse than litigated patents that aren’t purchased. We identified every case filed in 2009 and 2010 that had a definitive winner and had information on the presence or absence of an assignment or other transfer....

We study five years of data on patents listed and sold in the quasi-public “brokered” market. Our data covers almost 39,000 assets, an estimated 80 percent of all patents and applications offered for sale by patent brokers between 2012 and 2016. We provide statistics on the size and...