How much do market participants in different industries value a marginal change in patent term (i.e., duration of patent protection)? We explore this research question by measuring the behavioral response of patentees to a rare natural experiment: a change in patent term rules, due to passage of the TRIPS agreement. We find significant heterogeneity in patentee behavior across industries, some of which follows conventional wisdom (patent term is important in pharmaceuticals) and some of which does not (it also appears to matter for some software). Our measure is highly correlated with patent renewal rates across industries, suggesting the marginal value of patent term increases with higher expected profits toward the end of term.

中文翻译：

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谁在乎专利？专利期限边际价值的跨行业差异

不同行业的市场参与者对专利期限的边际变化（即专利保护期限）有多少评价？我们通过测量专利权人对一种罕见的自然实验的行为反应来探索该研究问题：由于TRIPS协议的通过，专利期限规则发生了变化。我们发现各个行业的专利权人行为存在显着的异质性，其中一些遵循传统常识（专利术语在制药中很重要），而另一些则没有（对于某些软件似乎也很重要）。我们的测度与各行业的专利续展率高度相关，这表明专利期限的边际价值随着期末期的预期利润增加而增加。