The project performs an economic analysis of patent data with the aim of detecting available and desirable indicators of the patent system, the patenting process and patent rights. Patent data can serve as indicators for innovation. Since the mid-1980s, the economic analysis of patent data has improved continuously by including additional information about patents, e.g. the duration of patents or the number of citations of patents. The project is part of a larger international project jointly conducted by the European, British, French and German Patent Offices. The task of the Ifo Institute is to deliver an analysis of the existing literature in the field of patent research with regard to economic applications of patent data. The advanced hypotheses, the patent measures used and the results of previous research will be summarized and presented in the project report. Thereby, the project provides a basis for further research of the patent offices, which aim to detect and develop the indicators with the highest economic relevance or alternatively to create new helpful indicators. The analysis showed that no indicators for the patent systems itself or for the patenting process are available. The patent literature concentrates on the analysis of the economic importance of patent rights. In the literature there exist several useful indicators, but many of them allow only for an ex-post analysis at the end of the duration of a patent.
Analysis of the existing economic literature on the explanatory power of patent data.
Lachenmaier, Stefan (2005). Identification of Available and Desirable Indicators for Patent Systems, Patenting Processes and Patent Rights, ifo Forschungsberichte 25, Ifo Institute at the University of Munich.
RSS