Economics Honor Thesis: The Market Effects of Smartphone Patent War

AN EVENT STUDY OF PATENT LAWSUITS ON SMARTPHONE PLAYERS’ PERFORMANCES IN THE PUBLIC MARKET

I wrote my economics honor thesis on smartphone patent war. You can view the full paper here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/223837349/The-Market-Effects-of-Smartphone-Patent-War

Enjoy!

Usage of Social Media

I think it’s good that it’s very interactive among students, and I really learned a lot from my peers since everyone looks at patent issues from very different perspectives.

Blog:

For me, at first it was really hard to do these blog posts, since I tend to spend a lot of time on researching interesting and informative topics, and I want to be as comprehensive and as accurate as possible.

It did get easier because towards the end of the class, I knew about what I am interested in, so the topics that I would like to cover was narrower than before. It was also because I gradually became more comfortable with the class materials and was able to absorb them, so researching on new topics was not as hard.

I think blog is a wonderful tool for students to be more proactive and curious about the class topic, and being able to explore different topics really helped a lot for learning more in depth.

YouTube video:

I personally do not like doing YouTube videos, because even after a whole semester, being a self-conscious person, I still feel a bit awkward videoing myself talking in my room. English is not my first language, and it is not for some other students in the class. I suppose having people understanding my accent in videos takes some extra efforts, so maybe people would cherry pick sometimes. This might not be the case, but I just want to throw it out there.

Comment:

Comment is great since it allows me to really take ample time to read others’ blogs and view their videos. It helps me with expanding my horizon and see how other students approach the same topics from very different angles. It also introduce me to many new topics related to patent. 

Class Reflection

Overall, this class is a great experience for me. From this class, I learned a lot about what is a patent, what can be patented, how is it composed, how to test the validity of a patent, what’s the application process, and what does it entail when a patent is infringed, and how to mitigate the risks, as well as patent trolling behaviors and the smartphone patent ecosystem.

Personally, I found this class to be useful enough that I actually switched my Economics honor thesis to a topic that’s patent related. I am currently writing my thesis on understanding the impact of patent lawsuits on smartphone manufacturers’ performances in the public market. I always assumed that plaintiffs are going after the damage rewards or licensing deals, which can definitely be true in many cases. But from the first few classes, I learned the main reasoning behind all these messy and abundant lawsuits among top smartphone players: to slow down competitors’ pace in research and development, which is very different from what I thought from the very beginning.

Also, since I did a lot of independent researches for writing the blog posts, I had a great chance to understand many terminologies and their applications, such as standard essential patents, FRAND, functional claims, patent trolling, patent licensing, etc. Having a good understanding of these buzzwords really helped me doing my research since I had to read a lot of court rulings and dockets.

The reason why I take this class is because I’m going to work for Cornerstone Research as a full-time Economic Consultant. My job is mainly using financial and economic models to quantify damages for lawsuits, so the majority of our clients are big law firms. I’m certain that many cases that I will be working on are patent related. I strongly believe that being able to have a deeper understanding about patents is crucial for me to succeed in the workplace.