An Empirical Look at the 'Brokered' Market for Patents

Abstract

We study five years of data on patents listed and sold in the quasi-public “brokered” market. Our data covers almost 39,000 assets, an estimated 80 percent of all patents and applications offered for sale by patent brokers between 2012 and 2016. We provide statistics on the size and composition of the brokered market, including the types of buyers and sellers who participate in the market, the types of patents listed and sold on the market, and how market conditions have changed over time. We conclude with an analysis of what our data can tell us about how to accurately value technology, the costs and benefits of patent monetization, and the brokered market’s ability to measure the impact of changes to patent law.

Keywords: patent market, patent broker, technology transfer, patent assignment, patent damages, software patents, business method patents, defensive aggregator, patent assertion entity, PAE, patent troll, nonpracticing entity, NPE

JEL Classification: O3, D4, L00