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SUMMARY:Seminar by Jeffrey Kuhn\, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business
DTSTART:20151007T120000
DTEND:20151007T133000
DTSTAMP:20260609T230359Z
UID:3c4a2d9d8db91292eccf479948224f82def78c886bde0f89c4c135f4
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Jeffrey Kuhn\, PhD Candidate\, UC Berkeley Haas School of Busi
 ness\n"Does Patent Scope Affect Cumulative Innovation? Evidence from Claim
  Narrowing During USPTO Examinations"Abstract\nInnovation is cumulative\, 
 in that new inventions are built on old ones. Patents on inventions typica
 lly cover at least some of the innovation that follows\, and broader paten
 ts can potentially cover a lot of follow-on innovation. There is a large t
 heoretical literature about patent scope and cumulative innovation\, but i
 ts predictions are ambiguous and the empirical evidence is sparse.\nIn thi
 s paper\, we study the causal effect of broader patent rights from a less 
 stringent examination process on cumulative innovation\, as measured by la
 ter citations. To do this\, we construct a novel measure of patent narrowi
 ng and validate it with a cadre of volunteer legal experts. Then\, followi
 ng Sampat and Williams (2015)\, we exploit that patent examiners systemati
 cally vary in how strictly they evaluate patents. Because examiners are ra
 ndomly assigned\, this provides exogenous\, examiner-level shocks to paten
 t scope\, which we can use to evaluate the impact on cumulative innovation
 .\nUsing this exogenous variation we find that increased patent scope lead
 s to (i) an increase in follow-on research in that area by the patenting f
 irm\, (ii) a decrease in follow-on research in that area by other firms\, 
 (iii) a small net decrease in overall follow-on research\, and (iv) that t
 hese results vary by industry. We also implicitly see that firms value bro
 ader patents more highly\, as they are more likely to pay the maintenance 
 fees required to keep them in force. Together\, these results suggest that
  patent scope affects both the private value of the average patent as well
  as subsequent R&D decisions of both the patenting firm and its competitor
 s.
LOCATION:EPFL\, ODY 4.03\, VIP Room http://plan.epfl.ch/?zoom=19&recenter_
 y=5863800.12869&recenter_x=731560.22521&layerNodes=fonds\,batiments\,label
 s\,information\,parkings_publics\,arrets_metro\,transports_publics&floor=4
 &q=ODY_4.03
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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