Information Provision and Innovation: Natural Experiment of Herbal Patent Prior Art Adoption at the United States and European Patent Offices

Prithwiraj  Choudhury; Tarun   Khanna

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2018

Information Provision and Innovation: Natural Experiment of Herbal Patent Prior Art Adoption at the United States and European Patent Offices

by Prithwiraj Choudhury and Tarun Khanna

Abstract

We exploit a natural experiment to study how codifying information about prior innovation affects subsequent innovation. A codified database of traditional Indian herbal formulations was adopted by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) at different points in time. The database, the Traditional Knowledge Depository Library (TKDL), was created by state-owned Indian R&D labs to provide patent examiners searchable “prior art” drawn from ancient Indian medicinal texts. Using a unique dataset of herbal patents filed between 1977 and 2013, we find that adoption of the TKDL affected the level of herbal patent filings and grants and shifted the nature of patenting away from pure herbal formulations, similar to those in the ancient texts, toward combinations of herbs and synthetic compounds that were less similar to the prior art and apt to be less contestable.

Keywords: Patents; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Ethnicity; Health Care and Treatment; Pharmaceutical Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; China; India;

Language: English

Format: Print

55 pages

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Citation:

Choudhury, Prithwiraj, and Tarun Khanna. "Information Provision and Innovation: Natural Experiment of Herbal Patent Prior Art Adoption at the United States and European Patent Offices." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 14-079, February 2014. (Revised January 2018.)

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Information Provision and Innovation: Natural Experiment of Herbal Patent Prior Art Adoption at the United States and European Patent Offices

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