Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Paper Series,
Research Institute of Industrial Economics

No 759: Renewal of Patents and Government Financing

Roger Svensson ()
Additional contact information
Roger Svensson: Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Postal: P.O. Box 55665, SE-102 15 Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract: I apply a survival model to a detailed dataset of Swedish patents to estimate how different factors affect the likelihood of patent renewal. Since the owners know more about the patents than potential external financiers, there is a problem of asymmetric information. To overcome this, Sweden has for a long time relied on government support rather than private venture capital. The empirical results show that patents which have received soft government financing in the R&D-phase have a higher probability of expiring than patents without such financing. But patents that have received more market-oriented government loans during the commercialization phase are renewed for as long as other commercialized patents. This finding indicates that it is the financing terms rather than bad choices of projects that explain the low renewal of patents with government financing.

Keywords: Patents; Renewal; Government Financing; Survival Model

JEL-codes: G30; O34; O38

35 pages, August 6, 2008

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