Intellectual Property and Patents

Patents are legal instruments that grant inventors temporary exclusive rights in exchange for public disclosure of their innovations, and researchers study how firms acquire, manage, and exploit these rights to sustain competitive advantage. The quality and citation patterns of a firm's patent portfolio have been shown to correlate with its market value, while the knowledge embedded in patent documents spills over to other innovators in ways that can accelerate or distort technological progress. Active debates concern how to measure patent value accurately, how global variation in IP protection shapes where and how firms invest in R&D, and whether licensing markets efficiently transfer technology or instead create barriers that slow diffusion. Understanding these dynamics matters because IP policy sits at the intersection of firm strategy, market competition, and the broader rate of societal innovation.

Works

94,286

Total citations

457,192

Keywords

Patent AnalysisIntellectual Property RightsInnovationTechnology RoadmappingPatent CitationsMarket Value