The market for patents in Europe

By using the PatVal-EU dataset we find that the most important determinant of patent licensing is firm size. Patent breadth, value, protection, and other factors suggested by the literature also have an impact, but not as important. In addition, most of these factors affect the willingness to license, but not whether a license actually takes place. We discuss why this suggests that there are transaction costs in the markets for technology. The issue is important because many potential licenses are not licensed suggesting that the markets for technology can be larger, with implied economic benefits. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.