This paper explores empirically the interplay between patent pooling and litigations using data on 1564 essential U.S. patents belonging to 8 different pools and a control database with patents having the same characteristics. We investigate two main questions. We first assess whether the introduction in a pool fosters the patents’ enforcement. Our analysis makes it possible to highlight various factors that help patent pool members enforcing their Intellectual Property Rights. We find a positive effect of the pools? size, as measured by the number of members, on litigations. We argue that this effect could be due to a transmission of information between members and thus increase the likelihood that the infringement is detected by the patent owner. We emphasize and discuss other factors that impact the incentives to litigate, after introduction, such as the size of the firm and whether the patent holder is vertically integrated or not. Secondly, we underline that the patent introduction into a pool, by reducing the uncertainty on the patent essentiality, facilitate the dispute resolution by settlement.
