Intellectual Asset Management (IAM): US start-up employment and sales growth rates boosted by patents, new research reveals, by Richard Llloyd
This post originally appeared in Intellectual Asset Management on January 25, 2016.
A new paper entitled “The Bright Side of Patents” has thrown fresh light on the economic benefits that patents bring to start-up businesses. In doing so, it provides a clear response to the groundswell of research in recent years that has led to claims that the US patent system hinders innovation as companies struggle with the high cost of litigation and, it is alleged, receive little benefit from their patent filings.
The authors, Joan Farre-Mensa of Harvard Business School and Deepak Hegde andAlexander Ljungqvist of New York University’s Stern School of Business, focused on all first-time patent applications filed at the US Patent and Trademark Office by start-ups since 2001 that received a preliminary decision by 2009 and a final decision by the end of 2013 – the total number of assets covered is 45,819. What they found leads them to state: “Our analysis shows that patent approvals help startups create jobs, grow their sales, innovate and eventually succeed.”