An empirical investigation into the relationship between the quality and value of patents

Patents are intangible intellectual property rights that enable innovators to obtain returns from their investments in the research and development of industrial products or processes. The core concerns of this thesis are the concepts of patent quality and patent value and the relationship between them. The thesis is executed in three studies. In the first study, a systematic literature review (SLR) is conducted to consolidate the findings from a burgeoning body of empirical literature on the concepts of patent value and patent quality. The SLR delineates four dimensions of regulatory patent quality — subject matter, utility, non-obviousness or inventive step, and sufficiency of disclosure — and links them to patent value (private or social). In the second and third studies, using panel data of several millions of patents from the United States Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO), based on the findings from the first study, the relationship between certain unexplored (yet important) aspects of patent quality and patent value is investigated. The second study advances a novel dimension of patent scope based on the meaning of certain scope-related words in the patent claims; using a text mining method, this study explicates a complementary and valid measure of patent scope. Using a text mining method, the third study tests and validates the hypothesized positive association between the disclosure quality of patents and the private value of patents in the markets for technology and finance. The thesis makes a theoretical contribution by (a) advancing the emergent ex-ante theory of patent value by elaborating a conceptual model that relates the different dimensions of patent quality and patent value and (b) testing certain relationships proposed by the elaborated ex-ante theory in an empirical setting. The thesis contributes to practice by informing on the substantivity of the effect of certain dimensions of patent quality on patent value. The thesis contributes to policy by suggesting that (a) innovators can be incentivized to file patent applications with high disclosure quality, which would improve the efficiency and reputation of the patent office which is often criticized for granting too many patents of poor quality, and (b) there are systemic problems in the USPTO which legally authorizes patents of poor quality (or overly broad scope) in the first place.

Publication year:2023

Keywords:Doctoral thesis

Accessibility:Open