Welcome to the website companion of the “Startup Patenting” by Michael Ewens and Matt Marx. This project provides novel data to answer the following questions:
How old was the firm when it patented?
and thus, we can answer
Is this patent associated with an entrepreneurial firm?
This project provides data on the founding year for U.S.-based firms to whom patents were assigned from 1976-2021. Check out the data here and the paper summarizing its creation. The figures below present some preliminary, descriptive results about young firm — 3 years or younger — detailed in our forthcoming paper.
Young firms produce
more novel patents
Young firms — three years or younger — represent about 8-10% per year, but 10-15% of novel patents.
Best patents when firms are young
Over the patenting firm’s life, their best patents– measured by citations –are their earliest.
Young firms are dominant in the early years of an industry
The proportion of young firms patenting in an industry’s lifecycle is highest when the industry is nascent.
We also merge patent assignees to startups in PitchBook and provide an indicator for whether a firm ever raised venture capital.