Work detail

Patent Trolls: Do Their Patents Differ?

Author: Bc. Šimon Trlifaj
Year: 2016 - summer
Leaders: PhDr. Jiří Schwarz Ph.D.
Consultants:
Work type: Bachelors
Language: English
Pages: 67
Awards and prizes:
Link: https://is.cuni.cz/webapps/zzp/detail/168778/
Abstract: The United States patent system is undergoing changes, with a sharply increasing number of
patent litigations and applications. This Thesis aims at analyzing the role of Non-practicing
entities—companies which engage in licensing and litigating patents, as opposed to
producing—in the system. Using two unique datasets of 533,720 U.S. patents, I investigate
what type of patents these entities uphold. Specifically, I focus on two proxy variables for
patent value (forward citations for social value and renewal rate for private value), and
analyze patents owned by one of the biggest Non-practicing entities, the Intellectual Ventures.
In comparison to two control groups, the results provide some evidence that patents owned by
this company: 1) do have an above-average private and social value, and 2) show smaller
relation between private and social value. The results support existing research which
suggests that Non-practicing entities possess higher proportion of “strategic patents”, that are
highly privately valuable mainly for their litigation potential

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Deloitte
Česká Spořitelna

Sponsors

CRIF
McKinsey
Patria Finance
EY