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on Intellectual Property Rights |
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Issue of 2020‒08‒10
three papers chosen by Giovanni Ramello Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo Avogadro” |
| By: | Bernhard Ganglmair; Christian Helmers; Brian J. Love |
| Abstract: | We analyze the extent to which private defensive litigation insurance deters patent assertion by non-practicing entities (NPEs). We study the effect that a patent-specific defensive insurance product, offered by a leading litigation insurer, had on the litigation behavior of insured patents' owners, all of which are NPEs. We first model the impact of defensive litigation insurance on the behavior of patent enforcers and accused infringers. We show that the availability of defensive litigation insurance can have an effect on how often patent enforcers will assert their patents. We confirm this result empirically showing that the insurance policy had a large, negative effect on the likelihood that a patent included in the policy was subsequently asserted relative to other patents held by the same NPEs and relative to patents held by other NPEs with portfolios that were entirely excluded from the insurance product. Our findings suggest that market-based mechanisms can deter so-called "patent trolling." |
| Keywords: | NPEs, patents, insurance, litigation |
| JEL: | G22 K41 O34 |
| Date: | 2020–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2020_196&r=all |
| By: | Dechezleprêtre, Antoine; Hémous, David; olsen, morten; Zanella, carlo |
| Abstract: | Do higher wages lead to more automation innovation? To answer this question, we first introduce a new measure of automation by using the frequency of certain keywords in patent text to identify automation innovations in machinery. We validate our measure by showing that it is correlated with a reduction in routine tasks in a cross-sectoral analysis in the US. Then we build a firm-level panel dataset on automation patents. We combine macroeconomic data from 41 countries and information on geographical patent history to build firm-specific measures of low-skill and high-skill wages. We find that an increase in low-skill wages leads to more automation innovation with an elasticity between 2 and 4. An increase in high-skill wages tends to reduce automation innovation. Placebo regressions show that the effect is specific to automation innovations. Finally, we use the Hartz labor market reforms in Germany for an event study and find that they are associated with a relative reduction in automation innovations. |
| Keywords: | automation; Income inequality; Innovation; patents |
| JEL: | J20 O31 O33 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14249&r=all |
| By: | Norbäck, Pehr-Johan; Olofsson, Charlotta; Persson, Lars |
| Abstract: | Within the policy debate, there is a fear that large incumbent firms buy small firms' inventions to ensure that they are not used in the market. We show that such "acquisitions for sleep" can occur if and only if the quality of a process invention is small; otherwise, the entry profit will be higher than the entry-deterring value. We then show that the incentive for acquiring for the purpose of putting a patent to sleep decreases when the intellectual property law is stricter because the profit for the entrant then increases more than the entry-deterring value does. |
| Keywords: | Acquisitions; Innovation; IP law; ownership; Sleeping patents |
| JEL: | G24 L1 L2 M13 O3 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14172&r=all |