Tesi etd-11282022-110133
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Tipo di tesi
Dottorato
Autore
MAZZEI, JULIA
URN
etd-11282022-110133
Titolo
Essays on the Economics of Patents: Post-grant review, disclosure and firms' strategies
Settore scientifico disciplinare
SECS-P/06
Corso di studi
Istituto di Economia - JOINT PHD IN ECONOMICS
Commissione
relatore Prof.ssa MARTINELLI, ARIANNA
Parole chiave
- disclosure
- green innovation
- innovation strategies
- IPRs
- patent quality
- patents
- post-grant review
- technology entry
Data inizio appello
18/05/2023;
Disponibilità
parziale
Riassunto analitico
This thesis provides novel empirical evidence to the ongoing debate about the optimal design of the patent systems, including a focus on firms' green innovation strategies.
The dissertation is composed of four chapters. Chapter 1 investigates the effectiveness of post-grant reviews in enhancing the quality of patents. We use the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), enacted into law in 2011, as a natural experiment to understand the impact of introducing these procedures on the quality of U.S. patents. Our identification strategy relies on the twin-patent approach, i.e. we exploit the fact that the same invention is patented in different legislation and not all legal settings allow post-grant review procedures. In particular, we compare the same patent filed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO). We identify two main channels through which the introduction of post-grant reviews may enhance the quality of patents. On one side, the risk of facing a future post-grant review may create the incentive for applicants to draft claims narrowly, reducing overly broad patents. On the other side, the possibility of a subsequent re-examination may reduce the leniency of patent examiners during the application procedure. Our results indicate that post-grant reviews contributes to a reduction of patent scope, increasing the legal quality of the patent system.
In Chapter 2 we study a specific strategy in filing post-grant review at the European Patent Office (EPO), namely when firms engage a strawman to seek anonymity during the procedure. It emerges that the strawman is used in those cases in which firms want to avoid signalling to competitors their interest in a field which is distant from their core activity and specialization. Initiating the post-grant review discloses strategic information, generating a trade-off between the possibility to invalidate a competitor's patent and the disclosure of valuable information.
Chapter 3 analyses the relationship between the degree of litigiousness of an industry, measured by the frequency of post grant review, and firm's entry in a new technological domain (TD). We use a large-scale dataset of firms with patenting activity at EPO in the period between 2000 and 2015. We rely on Hall et al (2021) and use a survival analysis to test whether the likelihood of a firm to enter a new TD is associated with the TD's degree of litigiousness, controlling for a variety of firm- and TD-level variables. Our findings suggest that the negative relationship between litigiousness and entry is higher for small firms without prior experience with patent opposition. Across technologies, the frequency of oppositions discourages firms' entry mostly in high-tech industries.
In Chapter 4 we focus our analysis on the automotive industry and the development of low emission vehicles (LEVs), investigating firms’ innovation strategies across different green trajectories. We use patent data to differentiate the incremental trajectory, characterized by technologies aimed at improving the efficiency of the internal combustion engine, from the radical trajectory related to hybrid, electric and fuel cell vehicles.
Applying a data-driven technique to cluster firms according to their patent share and specialization in each trajectory, we highlight the heterogeneous innovation strategies of firms. We then look for the characteristics of firms assigned to each cluster. The various innovation strategies pursued by firms are explained in terms of their specific learning processes, capabilities and accumulated stock of knowledge. The breadth of the firm’s knowledge and its relatedness with established brown technologies are crucial to success in both incremental and radical trajectories.
The dissertation is composed of four chapters. Chapter 1 investigates the effectiveness of post-grant reviews in enhancing the quality of patents. We use the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), enacted into law in 2011, as a natural experiment to understand the impact of introducing these procedures on the quality of U.S. patents. Our identification strategy relies on the twin-patent approach, i.e. we exploit the fact that the same invention is patented in different legislation and not all legal settings allow post-grant review procedures. In particular, we compare the same patent filed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO). We identify two main channels through which the introduction of post-grant reviews may enhance the quality of patents. On one side, the risk of facing a future post-grant review may create the incentive for applicants to draft claims narrowly, reducing overly broad patents. On the other side, the possibility of a subsequent re-examination may reduce the leniency of patent examiners during the application procedure. Our results indicate that post-grant reviews contributes to a reduction of patent scope, increasing the legal quality of the patent system.
In Chapter 2 we study a specific strategy in filing post-grant review at the European Patent Office (EPO), namely when firms engage a strawman to seek anonymity during the procedure. It emerges that the strawman is used in those cases in which firms want to avoid signalling to competitors their interest in a field which is distant from their core activity and specialization. Initiating the post-grant review discloses strategic information, generating a trade-off between the possibility to invalidate a competitor's patent and the disclosure of valuable information.
Chapter 3 analyses the relationship between the degree of litigiousness of an industry, measured by the frequency of post grant review, and firm's entry in a new technological domain (TD). We use a large-scale dataset of firms with patenting activity at EPO in the period between 2000 and 2015. We rely on Hall et al (2021) and use a survival analysis to test whether the likelihood of a firm to enter a new TD is associated with the TD's degree of litigiousness, controlling for a variety of firm- and TD-level variables. Our findings suggest that the negative relationship between litigiousness and entry is higher for small firms without prior experience with patent opposition. Across technologies, the frequency of oppositions discourages firms' entry mostly in high-tech industries.
In Chapter 4 we focus our analysis on the automotive industry and the development of low emission vehicles (LEVs), investigating firms’ innovation strategies across different green trajectories. We use patent data to differentiate the incremental trajectory, characterized by technologies aimed at improving the efficiency of the internal combustion engine, from the radical trajectory related to hybrid, electric and fuel cell vehicles.
Applying a data-driven technique to cluster firms according to their patent share and specialization in each trajectory, we highlight the heterogeneous innovation strategies of firms. We then look for the characteristics of firms assigned to each cluster. The various innovation strategies pursued by firms are explained in terms of their specific learning processes, capabilities and accumulated stock of knowledge. The breadth of the firm’s knowledge and its relatedness with established brown technologies are crucial to success in both incremental and radical trajectories.
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