Over the last two decades, there have been significant changes to the patent laws, both within the United States and internationally. This dissertation examines and evaluates the economic consequences of some of these changes. In the first chapter, the dissertation uses microeconomic modeling to evaluate the shift from rarely valid, but if valid, broadly enforced patents to routinely valid, but narrowly enforced patents. Modeling patents as a system of uniform protection, the analysis suggests that the switch will limit the patent system's ability to provide sufficient protection to ensure the expected profitability of socially valuable, but expensive innovations The second chapter uses data from the forty-eight continental United States and macroeconomic growth models to test empirically whether a state's own patenting contributes to economic growth and whether it contributed to the growth of other states. The regression results obtained reveal that patenting by one state provides an economic and statistically significant contribution to that state's economic growth and to the economic growth of other states in the same geographic region, but not to states outside the same geographic region The third chapter uses event study analysis to examine stock price reactions to appellate patent decisions. Although not conclusive, the results obtained tend to confirm the theoretical prediction of disproportionate stakes as between patent plaintiffs and patent defendants. The results obtained also suggest a preference for jury decision-making over judge decision-making for both patent plaintiffs and patent defendants / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_23250 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Contributors | Lunney, Joseph Glynn Stephen, Jr (Author), Malueg, David (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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