Deepak Hedge
In November 2000 Congress harmonized US patent laws with those of the rest of the world by requiring – in general – public disclosure of patent applications 18 months after their filing. Before that time, inventors could keep their US patent applications secret until the final patent was granted – in theory, for up to 20 years. Deepak Hedge is studying the on US applicants’ disclosure choices before and after this policy change to answer these questions: experiment in four separate papers to investigate each of the following questions: 1) Do inventors prefer (early) disclosure over secrecy in patenting? 2) Does patent disclosure accelerate the commercialization of the disclosed inventions? 3) How does the disclosure of patent applications affect the diffusion of technical knowledge? 4) Does the disclosure of inventions reduce uncertainty about property rights and duplication of R&D?
While at CESifo, Mr Hedge will present his research on the first two of these questions as well as collaborating with Dr. Justin Tumlinson on projects that study the matching of venture capitalists to entrepreneurs, as well as individuals’ choices to enter into entrepreneurship (as opposed to traditional employment). They also plan to study data collected from surveys of European firms with an objective of understanding the unique aspects of their innovative activities.
Deepak Hegde is an Assistant Professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and a Visiting Scholar at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Mr Hegde earned his Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley, and M.S. in Public Policy from Georgia Tech. He is a recipient of the Kauffman Foundation’s Dissertation Fellowship (2009) and Junior Faculty Fellowship (2012-2013) awarded to faculty with the potential to make significant contributions to research on entrepreneurship. Mr Hegde’s research has been published, or is forthcoming, in journals such as Science, Nature Biotechnology, Management Science, Journal of Law & Economics, and Journal of Economics & Management Strategy.