What is small? Small and medium enterprises facing patenting activities

Abraham Garcia-Torres and Dominique Foray ()
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Dominique Foray: EPFL / CDM-MTEI-CEMI

No 2010-09, JRC Working Papers on Corporate R&D and Innovation from Joint Research Centre

Abstract: The effect of a firm's size is analysed in relation with the probability of applying for a patent. We worked on the identification of a firm's minimum size, a threshold needed to formally protect an innovation by legal means. Below this minimum size the costs associated with protection are so high that firms prefer informal protection of their innovations. The literature concludes that as size increases so does the propensity to patent. This research finds similar results for pool regressions. In an attempt to understand the relationship between size and patent activity better, the population of firms is divided into two groups. On a first stage a firm was considered small if it had below 250 employees and large if it had more; a moving threshold was applied on a second stage. The results show that for some economies the minimum threshold needed for filing a patent is well below 250 employees.

Keywords: SME; patents; IPRs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C01 O31 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2010-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-sbm and nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ipt:wpaper:201009

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