Why do some patents get licensed while others do not?
研究了生物制药领域专利许可成功的原因，发现许可方的技术声望、许可经验以及技术组合的深度和广度比专利质量本身更能决定专利是否被选中。
To understand why some patents get licensed and others do not, we estimate a portfolio of firm- and patent-level determinants for why a particular licensor’s patent was licensed over all technologically similar patents held by other licensors. Using data for licensed biopharmaceutical patents, we build a set of alternate patents that could have been licensed-in using topic modeling techniques. This provides a more sophisticated way of controlling for patent characteristics and analyzing the attractiveness of a licensor and the characteristics of the patent itself. We find that patents owned by licensors with technological prestige, experience at licensing, and combined technological depth and breadth have a greater chance at being chosen by licensees. This suggests that a licensor’s standing and organizational learning rather than the quality of its patent alone influence the success of outward licensing.