Global markets for technology: Evidence from patent transactions

Antonio De Marco, Giuseppe Scellato, Elisa Ughetto and Federico Caviggioli

Research Policy, 2017, vol. 46, issue 9, 1644-1654

Abstract: The paper analyses the recent evolution of international markets for technology by examining changes in ownership of US granted patents. We study the effects of the geographical origin of patents, proxied by their first priority country, on the probability of patents being traded, on the timing of the transaction and on the probability of observing a cross-border transaction, while controlling for the characteristics of the patents, the time and sector specificities. The analyses are based on a comprehensive dataset that covers all the patents granted by the USPTO over the 2002–2012 period. The data from the US patent reassignment database have been cleaned and processed and a subset of 95,542 granted patents that have been traded has been identified. We obtain evidence from survival models that there has been an increase in the rate of patent transactions in recent years. The obtained results indicate that patents with a first non-US original applicant have less probability of being traded and show a longer time to transaction than US first priority patents. We also find that more science-based patents, which are usually characterized by a higher technological uncertainty, are more likely to be traded, but are much less likely to be involved in cross-border deals. The results are discussed in light of the impact of asymmetric information and search costs on international patent transactions.

Keywords: Markets for technology; Patent reassignments; Patent trading; Geographical origin (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L22 L24 O32 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733317301348
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:respol:v:46:y:2017:i:9:p:1644-1654

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2017.07.015

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().