Patent eligibility after Alice: Evidence from USPTO patent examination

Jesse Frumkin, Nicholas A. Pairolero, Asrat Tesfayesus and Andrew A. Toole

Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 2024, vol. 33, issue 3, 748-769

Abstract: In a series of decisions over the last decade, the Supreme Court of the United States altered the classes of inventions that are eligible for patent protection—a body of law called subject matter eligibility. One of the more contentious of these decisions, Alice Corp. versus CLS Bank International (Alice), questioned the patentability of a broad class of inventions involving abstract ideas, particularly in digital technologies. Exploiting a quasinatural experiment, we find that the Alice decision reduced favorable patent eligibility decisions by 31% and significantly and persistently increased legal uncertainty in patent examination by 26% for a broad set of technologies. Our analysis quantifies how legal decisions can limit patent protection and highlights the need for further research on how greater legal uncertainty affects upstream investments supporting invention and downstream innovations fueling growth.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jems.12592

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jemstr:v:33:y:2024:i:3:p:748-769

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... ref=1058-6407&site=1

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Economics & Management Strategy from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().