What is a Patent Worth? Evidence from the U.S. Patent “Lottery”

Joan Farre-Mensa, Deepak Hegde and Alexander Ljungqvist ()

No 23268, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We provide evidence on the value of patents to startups by leveraging the quasi-random assignment of applications to examiners with different propensities to grant patents. Using unique data on all first-time applications filed at the U.S. Patent Office since 2001, we find that startups that win the patent “lottery” by drawing lenient examiners have, on average, 55% higher employment growth and 80% higher sales growth five years later. Patent winners also pursue more, and higher quality, follow-on innovation. Winning a first patent boosts a startup’s subsequent growth and innovation by facilitating access to funding from VCs, banks, and public investors.

JEL-codes: D23 G24 L26 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-sbm and nep-tid
Note: CF LE PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published as JOAN FARRE‐MENSA & DEEPAK HEGDE & ALEXANDER LJUNGQVIST, 2020. "What Is a Patent Worth? Evidence from the U.S. Patent “Lottery”," The Journal of Finance, vol 75(2), pages 639-682.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23268.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: What Is a Patent Worth? Evidence from the U.S. Patent “Lottery” (2020)
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:nbr:nberwo:23268

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23268

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().