Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313
To study how governments can improve the quality of patent screening, we develop an integrative framework incorporating four main policy instruments: patent office examination, pre- and post-grant fees, and challenges in the courts. We show that examination and pre-grant fees are complementary, and that pre-grant fees screen more e ectively than post-grant fees. Simulations of the model, calibrated on U.S. patent and litigation data, indicate that patenting is socially excessive and the patent oce does not e ectively weed out low-quality applications. We quantify the welfare effects of counterfactual policy reforms and show how they depend on the quality of the courts (co-authored with Mark Schankerman).
Contact Person: Dr. Fabian Gaessler