Bankrupt Innovative Firms
研究了创新企业申请破产重组后如何管理其专利组合，发现它们倾向于出售核心专利而非边缘专利，且这一行为主要由有担保债权人驱动，导致技术扩散变慢并增加被专利流氓收购的风险。
We study how innovative firms manage their innovation portfolios after filing for Chapter 11 reorganization using three decades of data. We find that they sell off core (i.e., technologically critical and valuable), rather than peripheral, patents in bankruptcy. The selling pattern is driven almost entirely by firms with greater use of secured debt, and the mechanism is secured creditors exercising their control rights on collateralized patents. Creditor-driven patent sales in bankruptcy have implications for technology diffusion—the sold patents diffuse more slowly under new ownership and are more likely to be purchased by patent trolls. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.