On the Price Elasticity of Demand for Patents*
分析了专利费用对专利申请需求的影响，利用1980年以来欧洲、美国和日本专利局的费用数据，估计出专利需求的价格弹性约为-0.30，表明欧洲专利局宽松的费用政策显著促进了专利申请倾向的上升。
Abstract This paper provides an analysis of the impact of patent fees on the demand for patents. It presents a dataset of fees since 1980 at the European (EPO), the US and the Japanese patent offices. Descriptive statistics show that fees have severely decreased at the EPO over the 1990s, converging towards the level of fees in the US and Japan. The estimation of dynamic panel data models suggests that the price elasticity of demand for patents is about −0.30. These results suggest that the laxity of fee policy at the EPO has significantly contributed to the rising propensity to patent.