Product Development and the Timing of Information Disclosure under U.S.and Japanese Patent Systems

Reiko Aoki and Thomas Prusa

No 5063, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper examines the consequences of the differences in the timing of information disclosure between the U.S. and Japanese patent systems. Under the Japanese system it is possible for a firm to apply for a patent knowing the exact specifications of a rival's patent application. In contrast, in the U.S. the only way a firm learns about a rival's innovation is upon the actual granting of the rival's patent. We argue that this difference enables Japanese firms to coordinate their R&D efforts better than their U.S. counterparts and that this, in turn, leads to smaller quality improvements under the Japanese system. We show that the creation/diffusion tradeoff of patents can be influenced not only by the scope and length of patent protection but also by other features of the patenting process.

JEL-codes: F0 K2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1995-03
Note: ITI
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published as Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 10(3), (September 1996), pp. 233-249.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w5063.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Product Development and the Timing of Information Disclosure under U.S. and Japanese Patent Systems (1996)
Working Paper: Product Development and the Timing of Information Disclosure under U.S. and Japanese Patent Systems (1996)
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:5063

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w5063

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 ().