To Patent or Not to Patent. An Innovation-Level Investigation of the Propensity to Patent

摘要

This study seeks to shed new light on the complex relationship between patents and innovations that has remained extremely elusive thus far. The objective of the present study is to contribute to our understanding of which innovations are patented . and which are not . by analyzing the patenting decision for circa 800 Finnish innovations. With the help of econometric methods, the study seeks to shed new light on the question of how the propensity to patent an innovation is affected by the characteristics of the innovation, the market, and the innovating firm. For empirical purposes, the propensity to patent is defined as the fraction of innovations for which at least one patent application is filed, while an innovation is defined as an invention that has been commercialized on the market by a business firm or an equivalent. The innovation-level model for the propensity to patent is derived in the spirit of random utility models. The emerging probit model is estimated on a sample of 791 Finnish innovations using a quasi-maximum likelihood estimator called the partial maximum likelihood estimator, which allows for within-firm correlation in the data. The data sample of 791 Finnish innovations used in the study is drawn from the Sfinno database compiled at VTT Innovation Studies (formerly VTT Group for Technology Studies).