Patent Length and the Rate of Innovation

Abstract

This paper models the effect of patent length on the rate-of-innovation and consumer welfare. We find that the patent length that maximizes the rate-of-innovation exceeds that which maximizes consumer welfare. We show a countervailing effect of patent length upon the "size" and "frequency" of innovation. Longer patents increase the size, but decrease the frequency of innovation. The patent lengths that maximize the rate-of-innovation and welfare represent balance points between size and frequency. The divergence of the welfare maximizing and rate-of-innovation maximizing patent lengths has important policy implications that we briefly explore.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 153 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.