Effect of alliance activity on patent litigation

Abstract

This study precisely investigates that moderating effect of firm’s alliance experience in between the patent quality and patent litigation. As a potential moderator on patent litigation, firm’s earlier alliance experience is examined because a potential plaintiff considers the firm with higher patent quality and more alliance experiences as a potential alliance with higher benefit. Using unique dataset, the study first confirms that a defendant’s patent quality leads into higher number of patent litigation. The main result is that higher number of alliance experience mitigates the effect of firm’s patent quality on patent litigation. This paper contributes to investigate a possible factor to lessen patent litigation risk under the premise that firms continue to pursue innovation.