Inventor CEO and Patent litigation

This paper investigates the impact of the inventor CEO at the defendant firm on it's exposure to the patent litigations. It suggests that inventor CEOs, through their aptitude for producing highly valuable patents, research intensity and greater visibility attract more patent trolls and litigations to their firm. Although firms led by Inventor CEOs are more likely to be litigated following their highly valuable innovation, on average, they do not shy away from innovating more compared to other firms led by non-inventor CEOs. The results are robust to controlling for the endogeneity of the inventor CEO and using other estimation techniques. Our study highlights why inventor CEOs are especially valuable for innovative firms in a patenting system fraught with abusive and frivolous patent trolling that are detrimental to innovation.