Grid Thoma

Which Patent Systems are Better for Inventors

International comparisons of patent systems are essential to harmonization treaties and to analyze economic growth. Yet these comparisons often rely on little but conventional wisdom. This paper develops an empirical method to compare the economic strength and quality of patent systems by using renewal analysis of matched patents in different countries (same patent family). Comparing patents on the same inventions filed at the EPO for Germany and in the US, we find that the German patents generate substantially greater market power than their US equivalents, especially for small inventors. Also, the average US patent has relatively lower economic value (“quality”).

Patent Valuation and Trademarking

The valuation of the patent premium protection is analysed against trademarking, when the patentee combines multiple IP strategies regarding the same innovative project. We find that a pairing stra...

Cross-national Market Valuations of Patent Strategies

The traditional valuation approaches rely on the quantification of costs, revenues or market value of the patent assets. The market value model relying on the Tobins q equation has seen several ap...