ABSTRACT
This chapter studies the attitudes of inventors to the uncertainty surrounding the innovation process. To assess the expectations of innovators, a dataset of nineteenth-century Italian patents is used to estimate the monetary value of 10,124 patents applying the approach introduced by Bessen based on renewal data. The expectations on innovation returns are modelled at two critical instances: the moment of applying for the patent and the moment at which the inventor decides to abandon patent protection by not paying the required fees. On the basis of the differences between these two perceived values, the attitude toward uncertainty of different types of inventors (domestic, foreign, independent inventors, and firms) can be evaluated.
