Patent-based indicators for predicting patent commercialization: a study of the diffusion of pharmaceutical innovations

How can patent data be used by the managers for insights on technological innovation, what is the status of technological innovation contained in the firm’s patents, how can these innovations be managed better through their characteristics: maintenance duration, ownership, claims? Adopting a regional focus on India, the empirical findings of this study are a response to inadequate studies from developing countries on the low rate of patent commercialization. A descriptive analysis of a unique dataset comprising of the Form-27 documents (disclosure on the working use of the patent under Indian Patent Act, 1970) and the granted patent data (2005–2022) at the Indian Patent Office was followed by binary logistic regression to find answers to the above-stated questions. The key findings from Form-27 point to the embryonic state of majority of the pharmaceutical inventions in the patent sample. Further with a host of patent-based indicators (patent ownership, duration of maintenance of patent, number of claims and number of inventors), a total of 266 × 6 = 1596 observations was analyzed. Maintenance duration and patent ownership have been found to be positively significant predictors of patent commercialization. These results have policy implications for the government & the managers of the firms.