Description:

Speaker: Xizhao Wang 

Title: Innovation Commercialization and Patent Disclosure

Abstract: This paper studies how the commercialization of innovation affects patent disclosure. I measure the innovation disclosure by using textual analysis methods to construct the readability scores of each patent's detailed description, claims, and brief summary texts. To identify the causal impact of innovation commercialization on innovation disclosure, this paper uses the difference-in-difference approach.  First, this paper uses the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act which gave universities a potential realization of the economic benefits of the invention as an exogenous shock and leverages the readability change of university patents and non-university patents. Second, this paper considers the technology transfer office establishment as an exogenous shock of innovation commercialization to patent inventors. This paper finds a decrease in readability in patent detailed description by inventors affiliated with universities after the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act and the TTO's establishment. Such decrease in readability did not apply to patent claims and patent brief summary. This paper points out a possible strategic innovation disclosure behavior, a finding that when inventors foresee patent commercialization, they would strategically decrease the readability of patent detailed descriptions and lower openness in sharing how to make and use the invention.