On the Price Elasticity of Demand for Patents

de Rassenfosse, Gaétan; van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, Bruno

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1726211

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On the Price Elasticity of Demand for Patents

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 74, No. 1, p. 58-77

23 Pages Posted: 18 Dec 2010 Last revised: 7 Jan 2012

See all articles by Gaétan de Rassenfosse

Gaétan de Rassenfosse

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Bruno van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie

Free University of Brussels - Solvay Business School; Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) - Department of Applied Economics (DULBEA); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

There are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: September 1, 2010

Abstract

This paper provides an analysis of the impact of patent fees on the demand for patents. It presents a dataset of fees since 1980 at the European (EPO), the U.S. and the Japanese patent offices. Descriptive statistics show that fees have severely decreased at the EPO over the nineties, converging towards the level of fees in the U.S. and Japan. The estimation of dynamic panel data models suggests that the price elasticity of demand for patents is about -0.30. These results suggest that the laxity of fee policy at the EPO has significantly contributed to the rising propensity to patent.

Keywords: patent cost, patent fees, price elasticity, patent explosion, propensity to patent

JEL Classification: O30, O31, O38, O57

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

de Rassenfosse, Gaétan and van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, Bruno, On the Price Elasticity of Demand for Patents (September 1, 2010). Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 74, No. 1, p. 58-77, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1726211 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1726211