Essays on the Role of Science in Patents, Patent Quality, and Diffusion

Patents and technological standards play a pivotal role in the advancement of technology. Firms actively invest in emerging technologies and contribute to the expansion of the technology frontier. Patent offices are tasked with awarding patents of high quality in order to limit uncertainty surrounding such exclusion rights. This dissertation studies firms’ behavior in emerging technologies, the efficacy of patent protection, and the role of science in the development of technological standards.

The first essay explores the landscape of patents related to artificial intelligence in the pharmaceutical industry, spanning European nations, China, and the USA. In light of any potential disparities in patenting activity across these regions, this project investigates the behavior and strategies of firms contributing to such variation.

As patents are an innovation protection mechanism, the second essay reflects on the long-standing debate on the quality of such protection. It measures, in particular, the examination quality of patents retrospectively and analyzes the extent and kind of changes in patent claims introduced by examiners.

The last essay studies how scientific knowledge becomes the foundation of patented technologies that are essential for standards. Although the use of citations is the de facto way to measure such origins, citations are often too sparse for tracing the knowledge that flows into standards. Therefore, this project uses machine learning to determine the similarity between scientific articles and standardessential patents (SEPs), thus revealing the role of science in technological standards.