Do Patent Pools Encourage Innovation? Evidence from 20 U.S. Industries under the New Deal / Ryan L. Lampe, Petra Moser.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lampe, Ryan L.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Moser, Petra.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w18316.

NBER working paper series no. w18316

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2012.

Summary:

Patent pools, which allow competing firms to combine their patents, have emerged as a prominent mechanism to resolve litigation when multiple firms own patents for the same technology. This paper takes advantage of a window of regulatory tolerance under the New Deal to investigate the effects of pools on innovation within 20 industries. Difference-in-differences regressions imply a 16 percent decline in patenting in response to the creation of a pool. This decline is driven by technology fields in which a pool combined patents for substitute technologies by competing firms, suggesting that unregulated pools may discourage innovation by weakening competition to improve substitutes.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2012.