The market for intellectual property: Evidence from the transfer of patents.

摘要

This thesis studies the economics of intellectual property transfer using new data on the transfers of patents. We first present evidence about how the transfer and the expiration of patents relate to age, patent citations received, whether the patent has been previously traded or not, and the timing of the last trade. Next, we develop a model of the transfer and renewal of patents including costly technology transfer and gains from trade. We structurally estimate the parameters of the model and use the estimates to calculate the value of a patent, and in particular, to quantify what are the gains from trade in the market for patents. The estimation uses information on patent citations received, which relate to the whole spectrum of patents returns. Thus, the identification of our estimates does not uniquely rely on patents with value located at left tail of the distribution of patent returns.