• IPR
• Pair
• Papers
• Patents

This work aims at investigating how patent strategies in the field of medical innovation can influence the long-run production of public knowledge (i.e. ideas disclosed through open common institutions). In particular, the research area I am investigating relates to research on tumors. The specific research questions in this thesis are: i) Is the practice of patenting being a significant factor in shaping the intensity and the direction of future research? ii) Is the patented knowledge fostering higher quality research? In order to answer them patent and paper data are used. The relevant set of patents is identified using technological classes (specifically, class 435/7.23 at the USPTO which collects all patents referring to “tumor cells and cancer cells”). Moreover, all the relevant metrics on patents (i.e. forward and backward citations, number of claims, references to Non-patent-literature) are retrieved from EPO-PATSTAT database. Among all the patents in the sample, I proceed to identify which ones contain a piece of knowledge that has been disclosed also in a peer-reviewed paper present in ISI WEB of science. It has been found that, in the majority of the cases where an association is possible, there usually be a lag of four/five years (on average) between the publication and the granting patent date. Because of this delay, it possible to apply a difference-in-difference approach, where the grant is considered as a shock. The evidence of this works contributes to the debate on Intellectual Property rights when they are referred to the upstream level of research.