Patent Quality and a Two‐Tiered Patent System
研究了当发明者关注感知专利质量时，专利质量和申请量的决定因素，分析了双层专利制度（普通专利与更昂贵的金板专利）对减少低质量专利、提高社会福利的效果。
In this paper, we study the determinants of patent quality and volume of patent applications when inventors care about perceived patent quality. We analyze the effects of various policy reforms, specifically, a proposal to establish a two‐tiered patent system. In the two‐tiered system, applicants can choose between a regular patent and a more costly, possibly more thoroughly examined, ‘gold‐plate’ patent. Introducing a second patent‐tier can reduce patent applications, reduce the incidence of bad patents, and sometimes increase social welfare. The gold‐plate tier attracts inventors with high ex‐ante probability of validity, but not necessarily applicants with innovations of high economic value.