Patent Registration among Swedish Firms: Gaining an Understanding of the Relationships between firm-level Profits, Age and Patenting

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationships between firm age, year-to-year profit-levels and patenting-levels for some of the most patent innovative Swedish firms during the period 2010-2013. With consideration to existing literature on the topic of patenting, underlying mechanics of patenting, company characteristics linked to patenting and factors specific to Sweden, two short time-series econometric models were developed. Using data gathered from the Serrano and PAtLink Databases, provided by the Swedish House of Finance via the Stockholm School of Economics, 40 companies with at least five patents registered in Sweden during the period 2010-2013 were randomly selected and analyzed. The empirical analysis showed that firm age was not a statistically significant factor in and of itself while profits were, for the number of patents registered in expectation. Implications from these results include that resources such as profits may be more important than experience in terms of years, and that firm age may only be a relevant predictor of patenting levels to the extent that it correlates with other factors. Lastly, we make some suggestions for additional areas of research related to Swedish patenting, such as proposing more extensive econometric models, and comment on the implications of these results for business and stakeholders.