Patent Fees and Legal Status among SMEs: Evidence from the America Invents Act

[🏆 Awarded: RES Scholars '25; EPIP 2025 Recommendation of Distinction.]

Presented: EWMES 2025; Brown Bag Seminar, University of St Andrews; EPIP 2025; AsLEA 2025; RES 2025; Fife Applied Microeconomics and Golf Conference; St Andrews Applied Microeconomics Meeting; SES 2025; 3rd Essex PhD Economics Conference; RGS Doctoral Conference in Economics; SGPE 2025; RES PhD Conference 2024.

Abstract

I examine how the introduction of lower patent fees for micro entities has affected the outcome of applications filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. I exploit the America Invents Act as a natural experiment to conduct a difference-in-difference estimation based on a sample of applications filed by small and micro entities between 2010 and 2014. I find that, post-reform, micro entities significantly reduced the quality of their applications and were 37.36 percentage points less likely to be granted a patent. By retrospectively examining the effects of lower fees on micro entities, this research aims to draw practical implications for the design of future statutory fees.

Draft available upon request.