This paper studies how the extension of drug patents shapes follow-on drug research. Drug patents in the EU can be extended via Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs), which compensate originator firms for time lost between filing and market launch. A 2011 CJEU ruling (Medeva v. Comptroller General of Patents) tightened the eligibility criteria for SPCs on combination drugs, causing roughly 38 percent of SPC applications to be rejected or withdrawn. We exploit this ruling in a stacked difference-in-differences design, comparing follow-on patent citations for Medeva-affected drugs against unaffected drugs. Total follow-on citations fall by about 20 percent post-rejection. Citations by competitors and generics drop by 30 percent, consistent with reduced external interest in the drug's research space. Originator self-citations, however, rise by about 15 percent for patents that lose SPC protection, reflecting a strategy of accumulating secondary patents to preserve exclusivity in the absence of the primary extension. The results indicate that shortening expected patent life reduces overall follow-on innovation incentives, with the drop concentrated among outside firms rather than the originator.

This paper studies patenting activity by small U.S. entities before and after the passage of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) of 2011 which changed the patenting rule in the United States from a first-to-invent to a first-inventor-to-file system. Prior to the AIA, entities had the benefit of flexibility on when to file for patents but this benefit came at a cost; it created uncertainty in an atmosphere of litigative behavior about the date of the invention. To curb litigation, the AIA intended to reward disclosure of inventions through patent filing, but this added to the already constrained budget of small entities. Contrary to the AIA's intentions, the results indicate a decline in patenting activity post-AIA for all entities, and a widened gap between small and large entities compared to the pre-AIA period. Further, a higher exposure to litigation results in a decline in patents filed, but the rate of decline stalls post-AIA. This paper makes two contributions. First, it provides empirical evidence about the impact of AIA on small entities' patenting behavior and empirically tests if the concerns laid out by legislators prior to the AIA's enactment hold. Second, it lays out important differences between small and large entities' portfolio of patents and their incentive to file for patent rights.

This paper describes and uses a novel data set on patent applications from India between 2000 and 2016 to understand the spatial pattern of innovation in India and its evolution over time. Identification of such patterns of innovation over time is important as it helps us understand what motivates certain areas to be more innovative than others. Documentation of such patterns was absent to date as the addresses of patentees did not include enough information. We alleviate this by creating patent-level data using Intellectual Property India's public search tool that helps us add additional information such as pincodes of inventors that remains unavailable in existing data sources. We find that the concentration of patenting has decreased over time, with patents emerging from newer geographies, especially if they are close enough to an innovation hub. We also find that the inventors have a lower geographical concentration than patent assignees. The diffusion of innovation depends on geographical closeness to innovative regions and the absorbent capacity of the newly innovating region.

This article studies the difference between the time to grant foreign and domestic patent applications in India. Home bias violates the TRIPS agreement and introduces invisible barriers to innovation, but is well-documented to exist in major patent-granting countries. India has become an attractive destination for protecting patents in recent years, but no study of the office and TRIPS compliance exists. We supplement existing datasets with novel patent-level information to study the duration and rate of grant among domestic and foreign patent applications. We do not find home bias at the Indian office, contrary to the findings from major patent offices.