Estimating the determinants of the patent-publication lags in Europe and USA

The paper applies a novel methodology to original US and EPO patents data to assess how often the "general grace period" exception is being used in the USA and what is the likely impact of international patent regulations(that almost invariably deny such use) on the pace of new disclosures in academia. Comparisons to average publication delays of European academic inventors show that the grace period speeds-up the rate of knowledge communication and that variations are likely to depend on non-harmonization of international legal systems, transactions costs and on the presence of a firm among the co-assignees.