A vast literature documents a positive relationship between patents and companies stock market performance. Nevertheless, evidence on the influence of patents on companies’ debt capacity remains sparse. In this article, we examine the relationship between companies’ patent portfolios and their credit rating, providing relevant, albeit indirect, evidence on patents as a debt funding mechanism. Using a panel dataset on 155 U.S. firms, we find a positive relationship between companies’ credit rating and the size of their patent portfolio. Our indicators for valuable patents, however, provide a mixed picture. While there is a positive link between the average family size of a company’s patent portfolio and its credit ratings, we surprisingly find a significant negative relationship between patent forward citations and companies ratings. We hypothesize that this finding is the result of citations being associated with patent lawsuits, potentially incurring substantial losses on creditors. (Less)

中文翻译：

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专利和企业信用风险

大量文献记录了专利与公司股票市场表现之间的正相关关系。然而，关于专利对公司债务能力影响的证据仍然很少。在本文中，我们研究了公司的专利组合与其信用评级之间的关系，提供了有关专利（尽管是间接的）作为债务融资机制的间接证据。使用针对155家美国公司的面板数据集，我们发现公司的信用等级与其专利组合的大小之间存在正相关关系。但是，我们的有价值的专利指标提供的情况好坏参半。虽然公司专利组合的平均家庭规模与其信用等级之间存在正相关关系，但令人惊讶的是，我们发现专利正向引文与公司等级之间存在显着的负相关关系。我们假设此发现是与专利诉讼相关的引文的结果，有可能对债权人造成重大损失。（减）