Do Stronger Patents Induce More Innovation? Evidence from the 1988 Japanese Patent Law Reforms

By Mariko Sakakibara, Lee G. Branstetter. 2001

565 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Does an expansion of patent scope induce more innovative effort by firms? This article provides evidence on this question by examining firm responses to the Japanese patent reforms of 1988. Interviews with practitioners suggest the reforms significantly expanded the scope of patent rights in Japan, but that the average response in terms of additional R&D effort and innovative output was quite modest. Interviews also suggest that firm organizational structure is an important determinant of the level of response. Econometric analysis using Japanese and U.S. patent data on 307 Japanese firms confirms that the magnitude of the response is quite small.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Management of Technology and Innovation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e2fdd9921e18cfd0a6eb15be81122395302b373b

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In Economics and Econometrics

  1. Iain M. Cockburn
  2. Megan J. MacGarvie
  3. Richard R. Nelson
  4. Natarajan Balasubramanian
  5. Wesley M. Cohen
  6. Raffaele Conti
  7. Akira Goto
  8. Akiya Nagata

In Management of Technology and Innovation

  1. Iain M. Cockburn
  2. Richard R. Nelson
  3. Megan J. MacGarvie
  4. Natarajan Balasubramanian
  5. Wesley M. Cohen
  6. Raffaele Conti
  7. Akira Goto
  8. Akiya Nagata

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