When patents gain demand through new opportunities like new business models, they backlog patent offices

The purpose of the patent system is to encourage innovation. Inventors are invited to disclose their innovations to the public in return for a temporary monopoly over their use. Disclosure allows anybody to learn and improve an invention. Monopoly allows the inventor to reap private benefits of premium pricing. Mansfield (1986, p. 174) found that more than 30% of pharmaceutical inventions would not have been introduced in the absence of a patent system. The sheer uncertainty associated with drug trials and lengthy approval procedures do not warrant investment without the insurance of patent-induced monopoly pricing. On the contrary, Scotchmer (1991) has discussed how strong patent protection to early innovations can deter follow-on innovations, especially in complex product industries, thus acting against public interests. The patent system is thus responsible to strike a balance between public interest and the rights of inventors. The historical backdrop of the patent system is briefly discussed in Chapter 2. Here, I will discuss the current trend in global patenting to explain why patent life cycle is important, and why I study technological overlap and patent disputes. [[[IMAGE OMITTED]]] Figure 1 presents the patenting trends in the top five patent offices. The staggering volumes of patent filings in the last 30 years shows the increasing importance of non-tangible intellectual property in the knowledge economy. Innovators clearly respond to incentives offered by patent systems that also results in competition over monopoly rights. A higher demand for patents is responsible for lower quality and backlog in patent offices (van Pottelsberghe, 2011). There are many explanations for such a rise in patenting. New areas like business methods and computer software have slowly opened up for patent protection (Lerner, 2006; Bessen and Hunt, 2007; Hall, 2009). The traditional motive to obtain exclusion rights for innovations is no longer the only motive to patent (Levin, et al., 1987; Cohen, et al., 2000; Holgersson, 2013). New motives to patent include forearming against lawsuits, increasing negotiation power, build credibility before investors, obtaining freedom to operate, and the like (Blind, et al., 2006; Somaya 2012). Many scholars have studied the drivers of such a rise in patent applications (Hall and Ziedonis, 2001). Others have studied the resulting congestion in patent offices that are driving down the quality of patent applications (Harhoff and Wagner, 2009; Régibeau and Rockett, 2010). The phenomenal rise in patent filings has left all major patent offices overwhelmed with backlog. This has led to: (i) lengthy life cycles of patent applications between filing, grant, and even beyond (ii) increase in post-grant disputes as weak and overlapping patents often leak through the system