Determinants of Patent Survival in Emerging Economies: Evidence from Residential Patents in India

TL;DR

This study analyzes factors influencing the survival of resident patents in India, highlighting the roles of technological scope, inventor size, and tax incentives, using survival analysis methods on patent data from 1995-2005.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how technological, institutional, and policy factors affect patent survival in emerging economies, specifically India.

Findings

Patent survival depends on technological scope and inventor size.

Tax credit benefits are associated with lower patent survival.

Foreign firms with DSIR affiliation benefit more from R&D incentives.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to use patent level characteristics to estimate the survival of resident patents (filed at the Indian Patent Office (IPO) and assigned to firms in India). This study uses the renewal information of firm-level patents applied during 1st January 1995 and 31st December 2005, which were eventually granted. The data provided by IPO consists of 2025 resident patents assigned to 266 firms (foreign subsidiary firms and domestic firms). The survival analysis is carried out via Kaplan-Meier estimation and Cox proportional hazard regression. The outcomes of this study suggest that the survival length of patents significantly depends on their technological scope and inventor size. Moreover, the patents of the firms taking tax credit benefits exhibit lower survival rate as compared to patents of remaining firms. The study also finds that the patents filed by foreign firms with DSIR affiliation are getting more benefit from the R&D tax incentive policy.