Screening Property Rights for Innovation

IF 6.2 1区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Econometrica Pub Date : 2026-09-22 DOI:10.3982/ECTA22363

William Matcham, Mark Schankerman

引用次数: 0

Abstract

We develop a dynamic structural model of patent screening incorporating incentives, intrinsic motivation, and multiround negotiation. We use natural language processing to create a measure of patent distance, which together with detailed data on examiner decisions, enables us to estimate the model and study strategic decisions by applicants and examiners. Using the estimated model, we quantify the effectiveness of the U.S. Patent Office and evaluate counterfactual policy reforms. We find that patent screening is moderately effective, given the existing standards for patentability. Examiners exhibit substantial intrinsic motivation that strongly improves screening quality. We quantify the annual social costs of patent screening at $15.38bn, equivalent to 5% of total private sector R&D in the U.S. and show that reforms limiting the number of rounds of negotiation significantly reduce social costs.

查看原文本刊更多论文

为创新筛选产权

我们建立了一个包含激励、内在动机和多轮谈判的专利筛选动态结构模型。我们使用自然语言处理来创建专利距离的度量，它与审查员决策的详细数据一起，使我们能够估计模型并研究申请人和审查员的战略决策。利用估计模型，我们量化了美国专利局的有效性，并评估了反事实政策改革。我们发现，考虑到现有的可专利性标准，专利筛选是适度有效的。审查员表现出实质性的内在动机，这有力地提高了筛选质量。我们量化了专利筛选的年度社会成本为153.8亿美元，相当于美国私营部门研发总额的5%，并表明限制谈判回合数量的改革显著降低了社会成本。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Econometrica 社会科学-数学跨学科应用

CiteScore

11.00

自引率

3.30%

发文量

审稿时长

6-12 weeks

期刊介绍： Econometrica publishes original articles in all branches of economics - theoretical and empirical, abstract and applied, providing wide-ranging coverage across the subject area. It promotes studies that aim at the unification of the theoretical-quantitative and the empirical-quantitative approach to economic problems and that are penetrated by constructive and rigorous thinking. It explores a unique range of topics each year - from the frontier of theoretical developments in many new and important areas, to research on current and applied economic problems, to methodologically innovative, theoretical and applied studies in econometrics. Econometrica maintains a long tradition that submitted articles are refereed carefully and that detailed and thoughtful referee reports are provided to the author as an aid to scientific research, thus ensuring the high calibre of papers found in Econometrica. An international board of editors, together with the referees it has selected, has succeeded in substantially reducing editorial turnaround time, thereby encouraging submissions of the highest quality. We strongly encourage recent Ph. D. graduates to submit their work to Econometrica. Our policy is to take into account the fact that recent graduates are less experienced in the process of writing and submitting papers.