Academics still running amok in IP: VCs and patents

In a post on Sept. 20, 2010 titled Patents, Entrepreneurial Performance and VC Financing , the 271Blog pushes a paper by two assistant professors titled Patent Signaling, Entrepreneurial Performance, and Venture Capital Financing . This is another example of "out of touch with reality" academics running amok, and, indeed, the paper acknowledges Josh Lerner, creating a presumption of IP disconnect.

One indeed finds some "old friends" in the reference list:

Hall, Bronwyn H., Adam Jaffe, and Manuel Trajtenberg (2001), “The NBER Patent Citation
Data File: Lessons, Insights and Methodological Tools,” NBER Working Paper 8498.

Hall, Bronwyn H., and Rosemarie Ham Ziedonis (2001), “The Patent Paradox Revisited: An
Empirical Study of Patenting in the U.S. Semiconductor Industry, 1979-1995,” RAND Journal
of Economics, 32, 101-128.


Lemley, Mark A. (2000), “Reconceiving Patents in the Age of Venture Capital,” Journal of
Small and Emerging Business Law, 4, 137-148.

Lerner, Josh, Morten Sorensen, and Per Stromberg (2010), “Private Equity and Long-Run
Investment: The Case of Innovation,” forthcoming, Journal of Finance.


See various IPBiz posts, including:


"Patents are not why we are investing"


VC are trying to leverage up and create an exit strategy [illustrating a landscape wherein VCs got into some places without patents, and are trying to escape]


How VCs pick companies: finding entrepreneurs who aren't going to fail