Novelty and Disclosure in Patent Law
比较了专利法中弱和强的新颖性要求对社会效率的影响，并分析了在先发明制与在先申请制下结论如何不同，对理解专利制度设计有参考价值。
The stringency of the novelty requirement in patent law affects the pace of innovation because it affects the amount of technical information that is disclosed among firms. It also affects ex ante profitability of research. We compare weak and strong novelty requirements from the standpoint of social efficiency. We ask how our answer depends on the rule that determines which firm gets a patent when two firms have patents pending on the same technology. The possible rules are first-to-invent, which applies in the U.S., and first-to-file, which applies everywhere else.