June 15, 2017

Please join us for a brown bag research seminar with Paul Jensen from The University of Melbourne.

Policy Implications of Global Patent Examination Outcomes

Abstract

Patents play a central role in the global innovation system: providing important incentives for R&D investment decisions and underpinning international trade decisions. These issues are of obvious importance for policymakers since economic welfare is clearly associated with new innovations and diffusion of technology. However, little is known about how international patent office examination outcomes shape these decisions. For example, for an invention with potential global outreach, how important is the firm’s ability to get a patent in the designated country for the decision to export to that country? In this presentation, I explore a number of issues related to this question. First, I analyse the incidence of differences in national patent office examinations for the same unique invention (using a matched sample approach). Second, I examine whether the nationality of the inventor affects the outcome of the examination process. Third, I evaluate how any observed ‘local inventor bias’ shapes international trade flows. In conclusion, I consider the policy implications from this program of research, including some discussion about ways in which we might improve the efficiency of the global patent examination system.

Bio

Paul H. Jensen is a Professor of Economics and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Business & Economics at The University of Melbourne. His work relates to solving real-world problems and improving productivity via better public policy. He is a Research Fellow of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia (IPRIA) and the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre (OIPRC) at Oxford University. Professor Jensen is an important contributor to policy debates as well as an internationally-recognized scholar, publishing in top academic journals such as The Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of International Economics, RAND Journal of Economics and Strategic Management Journal.