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We document the occurrence of process claims in granted U.S. patents over the last century. Using novel data on the type of independent patent claims, we show an increase in the annual share of process claims of about 25 percentage points (from below 10% in 1920). This rise in process intensity is not limited to a few patent classes but can be observed across a broad spectrum of technologies. Process intensity varies by applicant type: companies file more process-intense patents than individuals, and U.S. applicants file more process-intense patents than foreign applicants. We further show that patents with higher process intensity are more valuable but are not necessarily cited more often. Last, process claims are on average shorter than product claims; but this gap has narrowed since the 1970s. These patterns suggest that the patent breadth and scope of process-intense patents are overestimated when claim types are not accounted for. We conclude by describing in detail the code used to construct the claim-type data, showing results from a data-validation exercise (using close to 10,000 manually classified patent claims), and providing guidance for researchers on how to alter the classification outcome to adapt to researchers' needs.

A central motivating factor for studying price markups is their effect on consumer welfare. Reported estimates of (firm-level) price markups in the literature, however, are often focused on industry or cross-country comparisons. These treat different industries equally rather than based on how relevant they are for consumers. We propose markup measures in which firm-level price markups are weighted according to consumption expenditures in the respective industries. Using a concordance table between consumption categories (otherwise used for the calculation of consumer price indices) and a firm's industry classification, we report results for Germany for the years 2002 through 2016. We find that consumption-weighted price markups are higher than the conventionally reported revenue-weighted markups. We further show that consumption-weighted markups have increased faster, in particular for medium-income households, which highlights a potential role of price markup as a contributing factor to changes of inequality in society.

Produktivität wird allgemein als treibende Kraft für das Wirtschaftswachstum und als Indikator für den materiellen Wohlstand einer Gesellschaft angesehen. Jedoch haben viele Industrieländer in den letzten Jahrzehnten ein rückläufiges Produktivitätswachstum und eine Ausweitung der Produktivitätsspreizung erlebt. Mögliche Erklärungen reichen von rückläufigen Investitionen in Forschung und Entwicklung über strukturelle Veränderungen im Hinblick auf Verschiebungen hin zu mehr Dienstleistungen bis hin zu vermehrten Messfehlern durch die zunehmende Digitalisierung. In diesem Bericht untersuchen wir die Rolle, die das Wettbewerbsumfeld eines Unternehmens für die eigene Produktivitätsentwicklung spielt. Ist eine zunehmende Branchenkonzentration - und der damit einhergehende erwartete Rückgang des Wettbewerbs - mit geringerer Produktivität verbunden? Und wenn ja, was ist die treibende Kraft dieses Effekts? [...] Productivity is seen as a driving force behind economic growth and an indicator of a society's material wellbeing. Over the past decades, however, many industrialized countries have experienced declining productivity growth and an expansion of the productivity differential. Possible explanations range from declining investment in R&D to structural changes to more services and increased measurement errors due to increasing digitalization. In this report, we study the role that a firm's competitive environment plays for its own productivity development. Is an increase in industry concentration - and the expected decrease in competition - associated with lower productivity? And what is the underlying driving force of this effect? [...]

We analyze the extent to which private defensive litigation insurance deters patent assertion by non-practicing entities (NPEs). We study the effect that a patent-specific defensive insurance product, offered by a leading litigation insurer, had on the litigation behavior of insured patents' owners, all of which are NPEs. We first model the impact of defensive litigation insurance on the behavior of patent enforcers and accused infringers. We show that the availability of defensive litigation insurance can have an effect on how often patent enforcers will assert their patents. We confirm this result empirically showing that the insurance policy had a large, negative effect on the likelihood that a patent included in the policy was subsequently asserted relative to other patents held by the same NPEs and relative to patents held by other NPEs with portfolios that were entirely excluded from the insurance product. Our findings suggest that market-based mechanisms can deter so-called "patent trolling."

We use exogenous variation in the strength of trade secrets protection to show that a relative weakening of patents (compared to trade secrets) has a disproportionately negative effect on the disclosure of processes - inventions that are not otherwise visible to society. We develop a structural model of initial and follow-on innovation to determine the effects of such a shift in disclosure on overall welfare in industries characterized by cumulative innovation. We find that while stronger trade secrets encourage investment in R&D, they may have negative e ects on overall welfare - the result of a significant decline in follow-on innovation.