TY - JOUR AU - Aoki, Reiko AU - Prusa, Thomas J TI - Product Development and the Timing of Information Disclosure under U.S.and Japanese Patent Systems JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 5063 PY - 1995 Y2 - March 1995 DO - 10.3386/w5063 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5063 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5063.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Reiko Aoki Hitotsubashi University E-Mail: aokirei@ier.hit-u.ac.jp Thomas J. Prusa Department of Economics New Jersey Hall Rutgers University New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1248 Tel: 908.443.1565 E-Mail: prusa@econ.rutgers.edu AB - This paper examines the consequences of the differences in the timing of information disclosure between the U.S. and Japanese patent systems. Under the Japanese system it is possible for a firm to apply for a patent knowing the exact specifications of a rival's patent application. In contrast, in the U.S. the only way a firm learns about a rival's innovation is upon the actual granting of the rival's patent. We argue that this difference enables Japanese firms to coordinate their R&D efforts better than their U.S. counterparts and that this, in turn, leads to smaller quality improvements under the Japanese system. We show that the creation/diffusion tradeoff of patents can be influenced not only by the scope and length of patent protection but also by other features of the patenting process. ER -