nep-ipr 2018-06-25 papers

on Intellectual Property Rights

Issue of 2018‒06‒25
two papers chosen by
Giovanni Ramello
Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo Avogadro”

From Revolving Doors to Regulatory Capture? Evidence from Patent Examiners By Haris Tabakovic; Thomas G. Wollmann
Disclosure and Subsequent Innovation: Evidence from the Patent Depository Library Program By Jeffrey L. Furman; Markus Nagler; Martin Watzinger

From Revolving Doors to Regulatory Capture? Evidence from Patent Examiners

By:	Haris Tabakovic; Thomas G. Wollmann
Abstract:	Many regulatory agency employees are hired by the firms they regulate, creating a “revolving door” between government and the private sector. We study these transitions using detailed data from the US Patent and Trademark Office. We find that patent examiners grant significantly more patents to the firms that later hire them and that much of this leniency extends to prospective employers. These effects are strongest in years when firms are actively hiring, and these relationships hold for the intensive margin of intellectual property protection. Ultimately, this leads the agency to issue lower quality patents, which we measure in citations. Together with other supporting evidence, we argue these results are suggestive of regulatory capture.
JEL:	D72 K23 L51 O34
Date:	2018–05
URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24638&r=ipr

Disclosure and Subsequent Innovation: Evidence from the Patent Depository Library Program

By:	Jeffrey L. Furman; Markus Nagler; Martin Watzinger
Abstract:	How important is information disclosure through patents for subsequent innovation? Although disclosure is regarded as essential to the functioning of the patent system, legal scholars have expressed considerable skepticism about its value in practice. To adjudicate this issue, we examine the expansion of the USPTO Patent and Trademark Depository Library system between 1975 to 1997. Whereas the exclusion rights associated with patents are national in scope, the opening of these patent libraries during the pre-Internet era yielded regional variation in the costs to access the technical information (prior art) disclosed in patent documents. We find that after a patent library opens, local patenting increases by 17% relative to control regions that have Federal Depository Libraries. A number of additional analyses suggest that the disclosure of technical information in the patent documents is the mechanism underlying this boost in patenting: the response to patent libraries is significant and of important magnitude among young companies, library opening induces local inventors to cite more geographically distant and more technologically diverse prior art, and the library boost ceases to be present after the introduction of the Internet. We find that library opening is also associated with an increase in local business formation and job creation, which suggests that the impact of libraries is not limited to patenting outcomes. Taken together, our analyses provide evidence that the information disclosed in patent prior art plays an important role in supporting cumulative innovation.
JEL:	H4 L3 O3 O34 O38 R1
Date:	2018–05
URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24660&r=ipr

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