Estimating the patent premium: Evidence from the Australian Inventor Survey

In this paper we use novel survey data on 1,790 Australian inventions to estimate the average patent premium, which provides an important benchmark for technology managers and IP professionals. Our data are drawn from the Australian Inventor Survey, which was sent to all Australian applicants who submitted a patent application to the Australian Patent Office from 1986 to 2005. Since some patent applications were unsuccessful, we have information about the private value of both patented and unpatented inventions. Our results suggest that the presence of a patent increases the returns to an invention by around 40 to 50 percent regardless of how we define ‘value.’ Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.