Events

This paper studies the determinants of investment in legal advice by plaintiffs in patent litigation. A hand-collected sample of US patent litigation cases is used to identify the empirical factors that determine the number of legal counsels employed by the plaintiffs. It turns out that more valuable patents lead to a higher investment in legal advice. Large firms, and plaintiffs with large patent portfolios employ more counsels, whereas individual litigants employ fewer. Software patents are related to a lower investment by the plaintiffs. These findings help not only to understand the cost drivers of litigation but have also important implications for the discussions on software patents, and the role of the litigant status for litigation success.

Institutsseminar: Sujitha Subramanian speaks about "Green Technology Patenting in the Refrigerant Gas Sector and the Climate Change Politics in Europe".

The use of debt to finance risky entrepreneurial-firm projects is rife with informational and contracting problems. Nonetheless, we document widespread lending to startups in three innovation-intensive sectors and in early stages of development. At odds with claims that the secondary patent market is too illiquid to shape debt financing, we find that intensified patent trading increases the annual rate of startup lending, particularly for startups with more redeployable (less firm-specific) patent assets. Exploiting differences in venture capital (VC) fundraising cycles and a negative capital-supply shock in early 2000, we also find that the credibility of VC commitments to refinance and grow fledgling companies is vital for such lending. Our study illuminates friction-reducing mechanisms in the market for venture lending, a surprisingly active but opaque arena for innovation financing, and tests central tenets of contract theory.

The next Institute Seminar will take place on Tuesday, February 10, 2015, at 6 pm in room E 10 of the main building.

Sunimal Mendis will give a talk on "Copyright, Digitization and the Public Domain: Is there a need for exclusive rights over digitized versions of rare public domain material in Europe?" Alina Wernick will moderate.