Galasso, Alberto and Schankerman, Mark (2015) Patents and cumulative innovation: causal evidence from the courts. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130 (1). pp. 317-369. ISSN 0033-5533
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Abstract
Cumulative innovation is central to economic growth. Do patent rights facilitate or impede follow-on innovation? We study the causal effect of removing patent rights by court invalidation on subsequent research related to the focal patent, as measured by later citations. We exploit random allocation of judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to control for endogeneity of patent invalidation. Patent invalidation leads to a 50 percent increase in citations to the focal patent, on average, but the impact is heterogeneous and depends on characteristics of the bargaining environment. Patent rights block downstream innovation in computers, electronics and medical instruments, but not in drugs, chemicals or mechanical technologies. Moreover, the effect is entirely driven by invalidation of patents owned by large patentees that triggers more follow-on innovation by small firms.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Official URL: | http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/ |
| Additional Information: | © 2014 Oxford University Press |
| Library of Congress subject classification: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory |
| Sets: | Departments > Economics Research centres and groups > Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD) |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Apr 2015 13:20 |
| URL: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/61614/ |
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