Technological Leap-Frogging and Strategic Patent Policy

Abstract

Patent examination procedures could be strategically employed to foster technological catch-up or even leap-frogging by domestic firms. This phenomenon is regarded as strategic patent policy. In this paper a theoretical model is proposed to simulate a patent office's strategic behaviour and then the derived hypotheses are empirically tested by employing patent data from the world's major patent offices. The empirical analyses show no evidence of strategic behaviour in the US, UK and German patent offices. However, national patent offices in Japan and China are evidently linked with strategic patent policies against foreign firms.