nep-ipr 2026-04-20 papers

on Intellectual Property Rights

Issue of 2026–04–20
two papers chosen by
Giovanni Battista Ramello, Università di Turino

AI Patents in the United States and China: Measurement, Organization, and Knowledge Flows By Hanming Fang; Xian Gu; Hanyin Yan; Wu Zhu
Did the defend trade secrets act spur the reliance on trade secrets? By Hussinger, Katrin

AI Patents in the United States and China: Measurement, Organization, and Knowledge Flows

By:	Hanming Fang; Xian Gu; Hanyin Yan; Wu Zhu
Abstract:	We develop a high-precision classifier to measure artificial intelligence (AI) patents by fine-tuning PatentSBERTa on manually labeled data from the USPTO's AI Patent Dataset. Our classifier substantially improves the existing USPTO approach, achieving 97.0% precision, 91.3% recall, and a 94.0% F1 score, and it generalizes well to Chinese patents based on citation and lexical validation. Applying it to granted U.S. patents (1976-2023) and Chinese patents (2010-2023), we document rapid growth in AI patenting in both countries and broad convergence in AI patenting intensity and subfield composition, even as China surpasses the United States in recent annual patent counts. The organization of AI innovation nevertheless differs sharply: U.S. AI patenting is concentrated among large private incumbents and established hubs, whereas Chinese AI patenting is more geographically diffuse and institutionally diverse, with larger roles for universities and state-owned enterprises. For listed firms, AI patents command a robust market-value premium in both countries. Cross-border citations show continued technological interdependence rather than decoupling, with Chinese AI inventors relying more heavily on U.S. frontier knowledge than vice versa.
Date:	2026–04
URL:	https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2604.10529

Did the defend trade secrets act spur the reliance on trade secrets?

By:	Hussinger, Katrin
Abstract:	This paper explores whether the U.S. Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) increased the declaration of trade secrets. Leveraging cross-sectoral variation in the importance of trade secrets prior to the DTSA, empirical results show that the DTSA was followed by an increase in the intensive margin of trade secrets declaration in service industries, not in manufacturing industries though. The extensive margin of trade secret declaration increased in both services and manufacturing, where the surge was strongest in manufacturing. The extensive margin increased most strongly for manufacturing with a high sectoral R&D intensity. The results are of interest to policy makers as trade secrets can hinder knowledge flows with potential implications for innovation.
Keywords:	Defend Trade Secrets Act, trade secrets, extensive and intensive margin
JEL:	O34 O31 O32 L60 L80
Date:	2026
URL:	https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:340014

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