On the Price Elasticity of Demand for Patents

Gaétan de Rassenfosse and Bruno van Pottelsberghe de la Potter ()

No 2008_031, Working Papers ECARES from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: This paper investigates whether patent fee policies are a potential factor underlying the boom in patent applications observed in major patent offices. We provide the first panel-based evidence suggesting that fees affect the demand for patents in three major patent offices (EPO, USPTO and JPO), with a price elasticity of about -0.4 (similar to that of the residential demand for oil or water). The laxity of fee policies adopted by patent offices over the past 25 years therefore contributed, to a significant extent, to the rising propensity to patent observed since the mid-nineties. This is especially true at the European Patent Office, which has dramatically decreased its fees since the mid-1990s.

Keywords: patent cost; patenting fees; price elasticity; patent systems; propensity to patent (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O30 O31 O34 O38 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 p.
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-ipr and nep-pr~
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Published by:

Downloads: (external link)
https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/5409 ... _wpaper_2008_031.pdf RePEc_eca_wpaper_2008_031 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: On the Price Elasticity of Demand for Patents (2012)
Working Paper: On the price elasticity of demand for patents (2008)
Working Paper: On the price elasticity of demand for patents (2008)
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:eca:wpaper:2008_031

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://hdl.handle.ne ... ulb.ac.be:2013/54093

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers ECARES from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Pauwels ().