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JuneSSDeJune
December 2013
Patent Statistics: Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
2
Acknowledgements
This publication has been managed by Eurostat, Unit G.6 - Innovation and information society.
Project leader
Bernard Félix — Bernard.Felix@ec.europa.eu
Eurostat, Unit G.6 - Innovation and information society
Statistical Office of the European Union
Bech Building
Rue Alphonse Weicker, 5
L-2721 Luxembourg
Production
This assessment report was prepared by Gaëtan Châteaugiron, Sogeti Luxembourg S.A.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION 5
2. GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT PATENT IN EUROPE 6
3. PATENTS AND INNOVATION 6
4. PATENTS AND TECHNOLOGY 16
5. PATENTS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY 21
6. PATENTS IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY 25
7. PATENTS IN NANOTECHNOLOGY 30
8. PATENTS IN ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES 35
9. PATENTS AND CLIMATE CHANGE 39
10. PATENTS AND ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES 41
11. PATENTS AND ECO-INNOVATIONS/ENVIRONMENT 43
12. PATENTS AND SOFTWARE 49
13. PATENT VALUE 51
14. PATENT LICENSING 58
15. PATENTS AND GENDER 62
16. PATENTS AND NAME HARMONISATION 68
17. FOREIGN APPLICATIONS/CO-PATENTS/COOPERATION 70
18. PATENT CITATIONS 73
19. PATENTS IN REGIONS 83
20. PATENTS AND R&D (INVESTMENTS) 88
21. UNIVERSITY PATENTS/ACADEMIC PATENTS 95
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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22. COMMUNITY PATENT 110
23. PATENT FEES/COSTS 115
24. PATENT QUALITY 117
25. PROTECTION OF BUSINESS METHODS (FINANCIAL PATENTS) 118
26. PATENT PORTFOLIOS AND VENTURE CAPITAL INVESTMENTS 120
27. PATENTS FILED FOR OTHER MOTIVES THAN INNOVATION 121
28. PATENTS AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES 127
29. PATENTS, MARKETS AND COMPANIES 133
30. PATENT FAMILIES 136
31. PATENTS AND OTHER TOPICS 140
32. TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER: PUBLIC RESEARCH – INDUSTRY 154
33. COMMERCIAL PATENT INFORMATION PROVIDERS 159
34. RECENT ARTICLES ON PATENTS 160
34.1. EURACTIV.COM 160
34.2. CORDIS 162
34.3. OTHER 163
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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1. Introduction
This report has been prepared in the framework of Eurostat’s work on patent statistics. It
consists of an extensive targeted review of the existing and currently developed
methodological, analytical and scientific material and of the most recent relevant literature in
the following domains:
1. PATSTAT data quality
2. Name harmonisation and gender;
3. Existing information and databases at institutional or company level or business
surveys: comparison and possible integration and matching of data for analytical
purposes;
4. Development of methods on patent data based on technical fields:
biotechnology,
nanotechnology,
environmental technologies,
energy, measurement of climate change,
eco-innovation,
technological innovation,
other emerging fields;
5. Development of methods for compiling information on patent families and citations;
6. Regionalisation.
An update of the report will be made available every three months.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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2. General information about Patent in Europe DG MARKT (European Commission), March 2011, STUDY ON THE QUALITY OF THE PATENT SYSTEM IN EUROPE. http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/indprop/docs/patent/patqual02032011_en.pdf
This study is dedicated to a comprehensive assessment of the quality of the patent system in
Europe. An effective system for the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights
represents an essential element for the growth of economies, which are based on the
generation and exploitation of new scientific and technological knowledge. The well-known
risks of market failures in the private financing of innovation investments call for a continuous
effort of policy makers to the improvements of the tools that are expected to guarantee proper
private returns from R&D activities while protecting also the interests of consumers and society
at large. The increased salience of patents to companies competing in the knowledge
economy has raised concerns throughout the world in the past decade about the actual
effectiveness of the current patent systems.
3. Patents and innovation de Rassenfosse, Gaétan & Dernis, Hélène & Guellec, Dominique & Picci, Lucio & Van
Pottelsberghe November 2012.
THE WORLDWIDE COUNT OF PRIORITY PATENTS: A NEW INDICATOR OF INVENTIVE
ACTIVITY
http://www.policypointers.org/Page/View/14718
This paper describes a new patent-based indicator of inventive activity. The indicator is based
on counting all the priority patent applications filed by a country's inventors, regardless of the
patent office in which the application is filed, and can therefore be considered as a complete
‘matrix’ of all patent counts. The method has the advantage of covering more inventions than
the selective Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) or triadic families counts, while at the same
time limiting the home-country bias of single-country-based indicators (inventors from a
particular country tend to file in their own country). The indicator is particularly useful to identify
emerging technologies and to assess the innovation performance of developing economies.
Christine MACLEOD, Alessandro NUVOLARI, February 2010, THE ROLE OF PATENTS IN
INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT: AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/files/2010-04.pdf
The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the research on the role played by patent
systems in the industrialization process (with a special focus on the British case). Perhaps
surprisingly, no consensus has been reached yet as to whether the emergence of modern
patent systems exerted a favourable impact on inventive activities. However, the recent
literature has shed light on a number of fundamental factors which affect the links between
inventive activities and the patent system. The concluding section of the paper outlines some
"history lessons" for the current debate on the role of patent in economic development.
Raffaele CONTI, Alfonso GAMBARDELLA, Myriam MARIANI, January 2010, LEARNING TO
BE EDISON? HOW INDIVIDUAL INVENTIVE EXPERIENCE AFFECTS THE LIKELIHOOD
OF BREAKTHROUGH INVENTIONS
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewabstract.php?id=500700&cf=44
By using data on 6 943 European inventors, we study how inventive experience affects their
ability to generate breakthrough inventions. For an inventor, the likelihood of producing a
technological breakthrough depends on the number of inventions produced, on one hand, and
on the probability that any of these inventions will be path-breaking, on the other hand. Our
theory posits that experienced inventors produce a larger number of inventions, but each one
of them is less likely to be a breakthrough. The former effect is a natural consequence of the
impact of experience on inventive productivity, while the latter effect stems from myopia due to
the exploitation of a well established technological path. The net effect of experience on
breakthroughs is positive, since path-breaking inventions are largely unpredictable and thus
producing many patents is the most effective strategy to achieve them. We first show, through
a conditional logistic regression, that experience has a negative effect on whether any given
invention is a breakthrough. A negative binomial regression with fixed effect then shows that
the rate at which new inventions are produced increases with experience; finally, by using a
fixed effect panel logit model, we find that expert inventors are more likely to achieve a
breakthrough. We conclude by discussing managerial implications about how to organize the
production of ideas in order to enhance the generation of breakthroughs.
Hitoshi TANAKAY, Tatsuro IWAISAKOZ, Koichi FUTAGAMIX, August 2009, A WELFARE
ANALYSIS OF GLOBAL PATENT PROTECTION IN A MODEL WITH ENDOGENOUS
INNOVATION AND FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT
http://ideas.repec.org/p/osk/wpaper/0924.html
This paper constructs a North–South quality ladder model in which foreign direct investment
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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(FDI) is determined by the endogenous location choice of firms and examines analytically how
strengthening patent protection in the South affects welfare in the South. Strengthening patent
protection increases the South’s welfare by enhancing innovation and FDI, but also allows the
firms with patents to charge higher prices for their goods, which decreases welfare. However,
the model shows that the former positive welfare effect overcomes the latter negative one, and
introducing the strictest form of patent protection in the South, that is, harmonizing patent
protection in the South with that in the North, may maximize welfare in the South as well as in
the North.
Gastón LLANES, Stefano Trento, July 2009, PATENT POLICY, PATENT POOLS, AND THE
ACCUMULATION OF CLAIMS IN SEQUENTIAL INNOVATION
http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/10-005.pdf
We present a dynamic model where the accumulation of patents generates an increasing
number of claims on sequential innovation. We study the equilibrium innovation activity under
three regimes: patents, no-patents and patent pools. Patent pools increase the probability of
innovation with respect to patents, but we also find that: (1) their outcome can be replicated by
a licensing scheme in which innovators sell complete patent rights, and (2) they are
dynamically unstable. We find that none of the above regimes can reach the first or second
best. Finally, we consider patents of finite duration and determine the optimal patent length.
Andrew W. TORRANCE, Bill TOMLINSON, May 2009, PATENTS AND THE REGRESS OF
USEFUL ARTS, Columbia Science and Technology Law Review, Vol. 10, 2009
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1411328
Patent systems are often justified by an assumption that innovation will be spurred by the
prospect of patent protection, leading to the accrual of greater societal benefits than would be
possible under non-patent systems. However, little empirical evidence exists to support this
assumption. One way to test the hypothesis that a patent system promotes innovation is
experimentally to simulate the behavior of inventors and competitors under conditions
approximating patent and non-patent systems. Employing a multi-user interactive simulation of
patent and non-patent (commons and open source) systems ("The Patent Game"), this study
compares rates of innovation, productivity, and societal utility. The Patent Game uses an
abstracted and cumulative model of potential innovations, a database of potential innovations,
an interactive interface that allows users to invent, make, and sell these innovations, and a
network over which users may interact with one another to license, assign, infringe, and
enforce patents. Initial data generated using The Patent Game suggest that a system
combining patent and open source protection for inventions (that is, similar to modern patent
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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systems) generates significantly lower rates of innovation (p<0.05), productivity (p<0.001), and
societal utility (p<0.002) than does a commons system. These data also indicate that there is
no statistical difference in innovation, productivity, or societal utility between a pure patent
system and a system combining patent and open source protection.
Luigi MARENGO, Corrado PASQUALI, Marco VALENTE, Giovanni DOSI, April 2009,
APPROPRIABILITY, PATENTS, AND RATES OF INNOVATION IN COMPLEX PRODUCTS
INDUSTRIES
http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/2009-05.html
The economic theory of intellectual property rights is based on a rather narrow view of both
competition and technological knowledge. We suggest some ways of enriching this framework
with a more empirically grounded view of both and, by means of a simulation model, we
analyze the impact of different property right regimes on the dynamics of a complex product
industry, that is an industry where products are complex multi-component objects and
competition takes place mainly through differentiation and component innovation. We show
that, as the complexity of the product spaces increases, stronger patent regimes yield lower
rates of innovation, lower product quality and lower consumers' welfare.
Andreea VASS, February 2009, TURNING IDEAS INTO MONEY. WHICH IDEAS AND
WHOM MONEY?
http://ideas.repec.org/a/aes/amfeco/v11y2009i25p181-188.html
Romania plays no part in the world technological race. In the last three decades, we have lost
the technological leadership role in the oil industry, simply because the communist regime was
reluctant to encourage the growth of information technology in general, and personal
computers in particular. Sadly, we failed to close the technological gap in the post-communist
era. Only one in five Romanian companies currently introduces a new product, service,
technology, etc., or brings about innovative business practices. This rate represents half of the
European average. We are lagging one decade behind the Czech Republic and Estonia, and
two decades behind the rest of the European Union. We did find, however, a number of
successful initiatives, rewarded at international innovation and trade shows. Unfortunately, the
overall picture is rather bleak; this paper suggests a series of possible solutions aimed at
improving it.
Zoltan J. ACS, Mark SANDERS, September 2008, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS
AND THE KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVER - THEORY OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
http://ideas.repec.org/p/use/tkiwps/0823.html
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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We develop a model in which stronger protection of intellectual property rights has an inverted
U-shaped effect on innovation. Intellectual property rights protection allows the incumbent
firms to capture part of the rents of commercial exploration that would otherwise accrue to the
entrepreneurs. Stronger patent protection will increase the incentive to do R&D and generate
new knowledge. This has a positive impact on entrepreneurship and innovation. However,
after some point, further strengthening patent protection will reduce the returns to
entrepreneurship sufficiently to reduce overall economic growth.
Mark KNELL, Martin SRHOLEC, APRIL 2008, COLLABORATION IN INNOVATION AND
FOREIGN OWNERSHIP ACROSS INDUSTRIES IN EUROPE
http://archive.europe-innova.eu/servlet/Doc?cid=9897&lg=EN
Collaboration in innovation between firms and other organizations is essential for the creation,
transfer and absorption of new knowledge as it reduces the risk and complexity involved in the
innovation process. Collaboration partners may include other firms within an enterprise group,
up-stream suppliers, downstream customers, competitors, the government and universities
and other research institutes. This study includes foreign ownership and analyzes
collaboration in innovation within a cross-section of 13 countries, and considers whether
differences across industries are important. When all firms are included in the analysis, foreign
ownership increases the likelihood of international collaboration but decreases the likelihood of
local collaboration, correcting for firm size, age, industry, location, internal R&D activity, and
other aspects of the innovative behaviour of enterprises. However, when firms that carry out
their own R&D activities and collaborate internationally increases the likelihood of collaborating
locally, which suggests that locally-owned firms that collaborate internationally are an
important source of technical knowledge from abroad. The analysis found less conclusive
evidence at the industry level. This suggests that there is much heterogeneity within each
industry, and that national innovation policy and other policies related to foreign ownership do
not necessarily have to focus on particular industries but should rather follow a more horizontal
general approach.
Michael J. MEURER, James E. BESSEN, Working Paper No. 08-08, March 2008, DO
PATENTS PERFORM LIKE PROPERTY?
http://www.bu.edu/law/faculty/scholarship/workingpapers/BessenJMeurerM.html
Do patents provide critical incentives to encourage investment in innovation? Or, instead, do
patents impose legal risks and burdens on innovators that discourage innovation, as some
critics now claim? This paper reviews empirical economic evidence on how well patents
perform as a property system.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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Bronwyn H. HALL, December 2007, PATENTS AND PATENT POLICY
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/papers/BHH07_OxREP_patents.pdf
A patent is the legal right of an inventor to exclude others from making or using a particular
invention. This right is sometimes termed an “intellectual property right” and is viewed as an
incentive for innovation. This article surveys the evidence on patent effectiveness in
encouraging innovation and reviews the current controversies in patent policy.
Ian AYRES, Gideon PARCHOMOVSKY, September 2007, TRADABLE PATENT RIGHTS: A
NEW APPROACH TO INNOVATION
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1020276&rec=1&srcabs=1103143
Patent thickets may inefficient retard cumulative innovation. This paper explores two
alternative mechanisms that may be used to weed out patent thickets. Both mechanisms are
intended to reduce the number of patents in our society. The first mechanism we discuss is
price based regulation of patents through a system of increasing renewal fees. The second
and more innovative mechanism is quantity based regulation through the establishment of a
system of Tradable Patent Rights. The formalization of tradable patent rights would essentially
create a secondary market for patent permits in which patent protection will be bought and
sold.
Rainer FRIETSCH, Jue WANG, September 2007, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND
INNOVATION ACTIVITIES IN CHINA: EVIDENCE FROM PATENTS AND PUBLICATIONS
http://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/fisidp/13.html
Patenting at the SIPO is increasing greatly, but has not reached the international standard on
a broad scale. The large shares of universities and CAS institutes in technology production
must be stressed. It can be expected that with increasing quality of the R&D results and
growing international competitiveness, the division of labour will be changed. In the area of
information and communication technologies, where some companies from China already
operate alongside the top performers, this division of labour is already established. In this field,
as in new technologies in general, scientific activities are specialised in the form of
publications. A positive development can thus be expected here also, although the
international level has not yet been reached on a broad scale. The success of the past years
bodes well for the near future.
Rifat ATUN, Ian HARVEY, Joff WILD, 2006, INNOVATION, PATENTS AND ECONOMIC
GROWTH
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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http://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/ijimxx/v11y2007i02p279-297.html
Empirical evidence demonstrates the value of intellectual property (IP) in creating economic
growth. Especially in knowledge-based economies, IP plays a fundamental role in the
decisions to invest in innovation. In addition to enhancing productivity and profitability IP and
patents have a monetary value – which, as intangible assets, add to a company’s balance
sheet and increase enterprise value.
IP is critically important to research and development-intensive sectors of the economy, such
as the life sciences industries. In these industries patents are critical to competition, and
significant investments need to be made to institutionalise innovation and IP generation.
Hence, governments must create an enabling environment which encourages investment in IP
and innovation and rewards those that develop and commercialise IP. Investments that help
create in patents and create an IP portfolio are best exploited with strategic management of IP
to develop competitive advantage and to realise maximum value from patents.
At a country level, the US has approached IP strategically and created an IP infrastructure and
in Japan there is strong leadership from the Prime Minister to develop Japan into an “IP
nation.” China now has an increasingly well-developed IP system, and the Chinese
Government is aware of its shortcomings and is willing to address them. However, in the EU,
the picture is less encouraging: the patent system remains fragmented and expensive; there is
no EU-wide community patent; understanding of the importance of IP remains patchy, and, in
many quarters, ideological opposition to IP remains strong. While the UK and the Nordic
Countries demonstrate good practice, these are the exceptions rather than the rule.
The Lisbon Agenda explicitly identified the EU’s objective to become the world’s leading
knowledge based economy. Progress has been poor. Until recently, the life sciences industry
has been one of the few industries where, the EU enjoyed global competitive advantage, but
this advantage has been lost. Increased funding is needed in the EU to encourage more
research and development (R&D) and innovation and to create a more dynamic sector which
values and invests in IP generation and management. However, creation of IP is not an end in
itself – further investment is needed for the development and commercialization of the
products made possible by IP generation. But, in knowledge-intensive sectors such as the life
sciences, both R&D and commercialisation are expensive and risky: hence, an environment
which encourages IP generation must be further reinforced with a support system that
encourages development and commercialization of research outputs and provides appropriate
incentive systems and rents for companies that make such investments.
Christine MACLEOD, Alessandro NUVOLARI, 2006, INVENTIVE ACTIVITIES, PATENTS
AND EARLY INDUSTRIALIZATION. A SYNTHESIS OF RESEARCH ISSUES
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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http://ideas.repec.org/p/aal/abbswp/06-28.html
The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of recent research on the role of patent
systems in the early phases of industrialization. Perhaps surprisingly, no consensus has been
reached yet as to whether the emergence of modern patent systems exerted a favourable
impact on inventive activities. However, the recent literature has shed light on a number of
fundamental factors which affect the links between inventive activities and the patent system.
The concluding section of the paper outlines some "history lessons" for the current debate on
the role of Intellectual Property Rights in economic development.
Mosahid KHAN, Hélène DERNIS, OECD 2006, DSTI/DOC(2006)3, GLOBAL OVERVIEW OF
INNOVATIVE ACTIVITIES FROM THE PATENT INDICATORS PERSPECTIVE
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/29/46/36599850.pdf
This paper provides an overview of innovative activities across a wide range of OECD member
and non-member countries, based on international comparable patent indicators. Patent data
are frequently used to measure innovative activities, because patent-based indicators reflect
the inventive performance of countries, regions, firms, as well as other aspects of the
dynamics of the innovation process.
Analysis of data from a wide range of sources (e.g. triadic patent families, EPO, USPTO, etc.)
shows that there has been a significant increase in the level of patenting for all the countries
over the past 15 years. Most of the increase in EPO patents is accounted for by European
inventors and similarly, US inventors accounted for the majority of the increase in USPTO
patents. The share of European countries (EU-25) in all EPO patents has remained stable
between 1991 and 2002. In contrast, the share of the United States in all USPTO patents has
increased by 5 percentage points. Developing countries (such as Brazil, China and India)
account for a small share of triadic, EPO and USPTO patents. However, their growth rates in
recent years have been higher than that of the OECD countries. There has also been an
increase in internationalisation of patenting activities (cross-border ownerships and patents
with foreign co-inventors), reflecting the globalisation dimension of Science and Technology
activities. ICT and biotechnology industries’ innovative activities tend to be more
internationalised than the overall level of internationalisation. In addition, non-member
countries, such as China, India and the Russian Federation have a high level of
internationalisation compared to large OECD countries. Breakdown of internationalisation
indicators by partner country shows that common language, historical links and geographical
proximity play an important role in determining partner countries.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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François LÉVÊQUE and Yann MÉNIÈRE, December 2006, PATENTS AND INNOVATION:
FRIENDS OR FOES?
http://www.cerna.ensmp.fr/Documents/FL-YM-PatentsInnovationJanuary07.pdf
What are the impacts of the patent system on innovation? The report addresses this question
in surveying the economic literature that has flourished on patents over the past ten years.
Four main economic impacts are successively discussed: the creation of incentives to
innovate, the diffusion of knowledge through information disclosure, facilitating technology
transfers through licensing, and the organization of cumulative R&D. The first three impacts
correspond to the key roles of intellectual property rights. The fourth one focuses on the most
debated and complex effects of patents in sectors such as software and biotechnology.
Alex COAD, Rekha RAO, June 2006, INNOVATION AND FIRM GROWTH IN HIGH-TECH
SECTORS: A QUANTILE REGRESSION APPROACH
http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/files/2006-18.pdf
We relate innovation to sales growth for incumbent firms in high-tech sectors. A firm, on
average, experiences only modest growth and may grow for a number of reasons that may or
may not be related to ‘innovativeness’. However, given that the returns to innovation are highly
skewed and that growth rates distributions are heavy-tailed, it may be misleading to use
regression techniques that focus on the ‘average effect for the average firm’. Using a quantile
regression approach, we observe that innovation is of crucial importance for a handful of
‘superstar’ fast-growth firms. We also discuss policy implications of our results.
OECD Roundtables 2006: COMPETITION, PATENTS AND INNOVATION
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/26/10/39888509.pdf
The questions of how competition and patent rights affect innovation have fascinated and
stymied economists for decades. This roundtable focused on recent theoretical and empirical
findings. A formidable panel of experts was assembled discuss those findings as well as its
views on how to encourage innovation. The first main issue was whether competition stifles
innovation or promotes it. Although there seems to be no universally-applicable relationship,
many industries exhibit an inverted U-shape correlation between competition and innovation.
In other words, moderate levels of competition seem to be most highly correlated with more
innovation. There were conflicting views among the delegates and some panellists regarding
the advisability of implementing compulsory licensing remedies in competition cases, with
some contending that such remedies will destroy incentives to innovate and others arguing
that their occasional use is necessary and not overly harmful to innovation. The Committee
then discussed the relationship between patent rights and innovation, which varies
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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considerably from industry to industry. Some sectors rely heavily on patents to protect the
value of their inventions, while others rely more on alternative means such as secrecy and
lead time. Time did not permit a thorough discussion of the various strategies that competition
agencies are using to cooperate with patent agencies in an effort to improve the interaction
between patent policy, competition policy, and innovation, but several of the written
contributions discussed that subject in more detail.
Diana WEINHOLD, Usha NAIR-REICHERT, February 2005, INNOVATION, INEQUALITY
AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS
http://129.3.20.41/eps/dev/papers/0410/0410002.pdf
The existing literature on the sources and nature of productivity growth during the early
industrialization stages of U.S. has identified the combination of intellectual property rights
(IPRs) with a large middle class and broad participation in markets as explanations for the
extraordinary level and growth of patenting. This paper considers whether these factors could
play a role in the contemporaneous evolution of innovation in a broad cross section of
countries today. Our results indicate that IPRs and the size of the middle class help explain
patterns of resident, but not non-resident patenting. Overall, the evidence suggests that non-
resident patenting patterns are driven more by exogenous factors and global integration, while
'home grown' innovation is more sensitive to internal structural and institutional factors.
Emmanuel DUGUET and Claire LELARGE, September 2004, DOES PATENTING INCREASE
THE PRIVATE INCENTIVES TO INNOVATE? A MICROECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS
http://129.3.20.41/eps/dev/papers/0411/0411019.pdf
This paper examines whether patenting increases the private incentives to innovate in
manufacturing. To study this issue, we build a model in which the value of an innovation
depends both on the type of innovation implemented (product, process) and on the existence
of a patent protection or not. We obtain a three-equation model that links the values of product
and process innovations to the value of patent protection. This model and the feature of the
data imply the estimation of a censored trivariate Probit model. We reach two main
conclusions. First, the value of patent rights increases the incentives to innovate in products
but not in processes and, conversely, the value of product innovations only – and not the one
of process innovations – increases the incentives to patent. Second, we find that the
distributions of product innovations and of patent values are skewed contrary to the values of
process innovations. A significant share of the skewness in product values would come from
the efficiency differences of intellectual property rights between the different activities.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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OECD, 2004, PATENTS AND INNOVATION: TRENDS AND POLICY CHALLENGES
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/48/12/24508541.pdf
Patents play an increasingly important role in innovation and economic performance. Between
1992 and 2002, the number of patent applications filed in Europe, Japan and the United States
increased by more than 40%. The increasing use of patents to protect inventions by
businesses and public research organisations is closely connected to recent evolutions in
innovation processes, the economy and patent regimes. Scientific and technological advances
have created new waves of innovation, notably in information and communications technology
(ICT) and biotechnology, and innovation processes themselves have become centred less on
individual firms and more dependent on interactions among global networks of actors in the
public and private sectors. Shifts in the legal and regulatory framework of patent regimes have
resulted in more expansive domains of patentable subject matter (patent regimes in many
countries now include biotechnology and software), and more robust and more valuable
patents.
Bronwyn H. HALL, Working Paper No. E03-331, May 2003, BUSINESS METHOD PATENTS,
INNOVATION, AND POLICY
http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/program/law/08-732/Patents/BusinessMethodPatents.pdf
The trickle of business method patents issued by the United States Patent Office became a
flood after the State Street Bank decision in 1998. Many scholars, both legal and economic,
have critiqued both the quality of these patents and the decision itself. This paper discusses
the likely impact of these patents on innovation. It first reviews the facts about business
method and internet patents briefly and then explores what economists know about the
relationship between the patent system and innovation. It concludes by finding some
consensus in the literature about the problems associated with this particular expansion of
patentable subject matter, highlighting remaining areas of disagreement, and suggesting
where there are major gaps in our understanding of the impact of these patents.
Bronwyn H. HALL, February 2002, PATENTS AND INNOVATION, UC Berkeley and NBER
http://www.ftc.gov/opp/intellect/020226bronwynhhall.pdf
Powerpoint presentation
4. Patents and technology
Fischer, Timo & Henkel, Joachim, 2012, PATENT TROLLS ON MARKETS FOR
TECHNOLOGY – AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF NPES’ PATENT ACQUISITIONS
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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http://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/respol/v41y2012i9p1519-1533.html
Patent trolls, or NPEs, appropriate profits from innovation solely by enforcing patents against
infringers. They are often characterized as relying on low-quality patents, an assessment that,
if correct, would imply that eradicating such patents would effectively terminate the NPE
business. In this paper, we shed light on this issue by empirically analyzing NPEs’ patent
acquisitions. We draw on a unique dataset of 392 U.S. patents acquired by known NPEs
between 1997 and 2006, which we compare to three control groups of 784 U.S. patents each
acquired by practicing firms. We find that the probability that a traded patent is acquired by an
NPE rather than a practicing entity increases in the scope of the patent, in the patent density
of its technology field and, contrary to common belief, in the patent's technological quality. Our
findings thus support recent theoretical propositions about the NPE business model, showing
that NPEs procure patents that are more likely to be infringed, harder to substitute for, and
robust to legal challenges. The fact that NPE-acquired patents are of significantly higher
quality than those in the control group implies that elevating minimum patent quality will not put
an end to the NPE business, and suggests that this business is sustainable in the long run.
We furthermore discuss the fact that NPEs are peculiar players on markets for technology
insofar as they are solely interested in the exclusion right, not in the underlying knowledge. We
posit that transactions involving NPEs may only be the tip of the iceberg of “patent-only”
transactions, a conjecture with strong implications for the efficiency and the study of markets
for technologies. Managerial and policy implications are discussed.
Tomoya YANAGISAWA and Dominique GUELLEC, December 2009, THE EMERGING
PATENT MARKETPLACE
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/62/55/44335523.pdf
Facilitating the mobilisation, sharing, or exchange of patents is increasingly important to
promote innovation in this globalised and well-networked world, where the circulation of ideas
and technologies is essential to innovation. In the context of open innovation, patents are
expected to play a role as a means for transferring ideas and technologies from one entity to
another, in addition to acting as a means for excluding others from using companies’ own
ideas and technologies. In such a situation, a variety of new entities focusing on patent-related
transactions are emerging. Some IP specialist firms seek to monetize patents by creating
strategic patent portfolios and licensing them. Others provide websites to establish online
marketplaces where patents and ideas could be traded. And still others establish a co-
operative venture that buys and licenses patents to its members for defensive purpose. They
also include IP investment banks that will lend against the value of IP, and firms that seek to
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
18
create funds, similar to mutual funds, which allow investors to earn revenue from royalties.
These new players now could significantly influence the circulation of patents. It would be
important for governments to deepen their understanding of how these new players are
performing in the patent transaction markets in order to support their development in the most
socially beneficial directions. This may also be important for traditional technology-oriented
companies, since the effective use of patent transaction markets will help them improve their
innovation process and strengthen their competitiveness. Therefore, analysis of the functions,
business models, and activities of IP specialist firms is the central topic of this research.
Rudi BEKKERS, René BONGARD, Alessandro NUVOLARI, June 2009, ESSENTIAL
PATENTS IN INDUSTRY STANDARDS: THE CASE OF UMTS
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewpaper.php?id=5587&cf=32
We study the determinants of essential patents in industry standards. In particular, we assess
the role of two main factors: the significance of the technological solution contained in the
patent and the involvement of the applicant of the patent in the standardization process. To
this end, we examine the case of UMTS one of the most successful standards in the area of
mobile telecommunications. We compare the patents claimed essential for the UMTS standard
with a group of randomly selected control patents covering the same time frame and
technology classes. We establish that both the technological significance of the patent
(measured using forward citations) and the applicant s involvement in the standardization
process have a positive effect on the probability that a patent will be claimed as essential . On
the basis of our findings, we offer policy recommendations.
Camilla LENZI, 2007, TECHNOLOGY MOBILITY AND JOB MOBILITY: A COMPARATIVE
ANALYSIS BETWEEN PATENT AND SURVEY DATA
http://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/DRUID_DK/D071211L.pdf
In recent years, increasing attention and resources have been devoted to the analysis of
workers’ mobility and the collection of new and extensive datasets in order to monitor and
appraise this phenomenon. Most of the studies make use of information about inventors
extracted from patent data. In fact, patent data collects detailed information on inventors, their
geographical location and the applicants of their patents.
This paper instead makes use of unique data on inventors’ curriculum vitae collected through
a survey addressed to a group of Italian inventors in the pharmaceutical field and compares
this information to those extracted from patent data.
Results seem to challenge the traditional interpretation of mobility phenomena based on
patent data and suggest that patent and survey data might capture different aspects of
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
19
inventors’ career path. In particular, results indicate that survey data describes the whole set of
inventors’ employers and the knowledge flows across them. Conversely, patent data portrays
a different set that is the one composed of those actors directly involved in inventive processes
and participating to the production of patented knowledge. More interestingly, they overlap
only partially and do not necessarily coincide.
Mario CIMOLI, Annalisa PRIMI, March 2008, TECHNOLOGY AND INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY: A TAXONOMY OF CONTEMPORARY MARKETS FOR KNOWLEDGE AND
THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT
http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/files/2008-06.pdf
This paper aims to contribute to frame the IP for development debate into a more extensive
discussion on appropriability, within the perspective of policies shaping scientific, technological
and production capabilities in the light of development theory. Through the lenses of the
paradigm based theory of innovation, the authors first recognize that technological
asymmetries and gaps between firms and countries appear more as sticky features than as
transitory stages of (automatic) adjustment processes, thus reassessing the appropriability ad
disclosure function of patents. Then, the paper presents a taxonomy of contemporary markets
for knowledge, flagging the existence of what we call derivative markets for knowledge.
Patents become to a certain extent liquid because they loose the weight and the density of the
technological component and they can easily circulate in the market without having
necessarily to be entangled in any final artifact. Just as in derivative financial markets, the
value of patents is a function of expectations regarding their uncertain potential future value.
The paper concludes sketching the implications for development focusing on two major issues:
i) how reassessing the role of IP through an evolutionary perspective affects behavioral
microfoundations of innovative conducts and ii) how asymmetries in technological and
production capacities between countries mould patenting behavior and participation and
exclusion in the contemporary markets for knowledge.
Bin XU and Eric P. CHIANG, March 2005, TRADE, PATENTS AND INTERNATIONAL
TECHNOLOGY DIFFUSION, J. Int. Trade & Economic Development, Vol. 14, No. 1, 115 –
135
http://www.iprsonline.org/resources/docs/XuChiangTechDiffus.pdf
This paper investigates international technology diffusion through trade and patenting in a
sample of 48 countries for the period 1980 – 2000. We divide the sample in three income
groups to detect different patterns of technology absorption. Our results show that rich
countries benefit from domestic technology and foreign technology embodied in imported
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
20
capital goods, middle-income countries enjoy technology spillovers from foreign patents and
imported capital goods, and poor countries benefit mainly from foreign patents. We find that
government policies on intellectual property rights protection and trade openness have large
effects on foreign technology spillovers in middle- and low-income countries.
Biju Paul ABRAHAM, Soumyo D. MOITRA, January 2005, ANALYSIS OF INTERNET
PATENTING STRATEGIES OF E-COMMERCE FIRMS
http://www.esocialsciences.com/data/articles/Document12262010170.110943.pdf
Patents and patent applications are important indicators of innovative activity in industrial R &
D, especially in areas such as Information Technology (IT), where technology growth is rapid.
Within the IT sector this is especially true of patents for Internet-related technologies where
patenting is often the only way by which entry-barriers can be erected against competitors.
This paper presents the analysis of Internet-related patent applications that have been filed
under the Paris Cooperation Treaty (PCT) of the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO) by fourteen major international firms. We analyze the patent applications of these
firms to identify the business application, technology type and countries designated in these
applications. An analysis of this data is done to try to understand the patenting behavior of the
major firms in the area of e-commerce. We also suggest a number of areas for future
research.
Bronwyn H. HALL, Manuel TRAJTENBERG, October 2004, UNCOVERING GPTS WITH
PATENT DATA
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/papers/HallTrajtenberg04_GPT.pdf
This paper asks the question: Can we see evidence of General Purpose Technologies in
patent data? Using data on three million US patents granted between 1967 and 1999, and
their citations received between 1975 and 2002, we construct a number of measures of GPTs,
including generality, number of citations, and patent class growth, for patents themselves and
for the patents that cite the patents. A selection of the top twenty patents in the tails of the
distribution of several of these measures yields a set of mostly ICT technologies, of which the
most important are those underlying transactions on the internet and object-oriented software.
We conclude with a brief discussion of the problems we encountered in developing our
measures and suggestions for future work in this area.
Dominique GUELLEC, Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE DE LA POTTERIE, Research Policy
30(8) 2001, THE INTERNATIONALISATION OF TECHNOLOGY ANALYSED WITH PATENT
DATA
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
21
http://www.ulb.ac.be/cours/solvay/vanpottelsberghe/resources/Pap_ResPol_1.pdf
This paper presents three new patent-based indicators of internationalisation of technology
reflecting international co-operation in research and the location of research facilities of
multinational firms. They witness both an increasing trend towards the globalisation of
technology in the OECD area and large cross-country differences in the extent of
internationalisation. An empirical analysis shows that the degree of technological
internationalisation is higher for small countries and for countries with low technological
intensity. Finally, two countries are more likely to collaborate if they are close to each other, if
they have a similar technological specialisation and if they share a common language. Being
member of the European Union involves more cross-border ownership but does not entail
more research co-operation than it is implied by the above factors. Nordic countries have a
particularly high propensity to collaborate together.
Bronwyn H. HALL, Rose Marie HAM, April 1999, THE PATENT PARADOX REVISITED:
DETERMINANTS OF PATENTING IN THE US SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY, 1980-94
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=506262
This paper examines the patenting behavior of firms in an industry characterized by rapid
technological change and cumulative innovation. Recent evidence suggests that
semiconductor firms do not rely heavily on patents, despite the strengthening of US patent
rights in the early 1980s. Yet the propensity of semiconductor firms to patent has risen
dramatically over the past decade. This paper explores this apparent paradox by analyzing the
patenting activities of almost 100 US semiconductor firms during 1980-94. The results suggest
that stronger patents may have facilitated entry by firms in niche product markets, while
spawning “patent portfolio races” among capital-intensive firms.
5. Patents in biotechnology
Shardul Agrawala, Cécile Bordier, Victoria Schreitter, Valerie Karplus March 2012
ADAPTATION AND INNOVATION: AN ANALYSIS OF CROP BIOTECHNOLOGY PATENT
DATA
http://ideas.repec.org/p/oec/envaaa/40-en.html
Innovation in technologies that promote mitigation and adaptation will be critical for tackling
climate change. It can decrease the costs of policy measures and provide new opportunities
for the private sector. However, most discussions of innovation have focused on mitigation,
while little attention has been paid to innovation for adaptation. This paper uses agricultural
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
22
crop biotechnology as a case study of innovative activity. The agricultural sector is considered
to be particularly vulnerable to climate change, in addition to facing the pressures of meeting
the demands of a rising world population. Innovation in plant breeding to develop crop
varieties that are more resilient to climate change impacts is one of several possible
adaptation options for agriculture. This paper neither advocates nor discourages the use of
biotechnology, but focuses on providing estimates of the level and trends of innovation in this
field.
John L. KING, July 2009, MULTINATIONAL TECHNOLOGY DIFFUSION IN AGRICULTURE
http://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea09/49820.html
This paper presents data on international technology diffusion of agricultural biotechnology.
Patent family data, which identify related intellectual property in different countries with the
same owner, represents technology flows between countries. Technology flows occur mostly
between developed countries, and are similar for different types of entities (private, non-profit
and university, government) that seek patent protection abroad. Technology diffusion through
patent families is a significant predictor of international trade flows, which is consistent with
several different models of trade.
Enrico SORISIO, July 2009, PATENTING ACTIVITY IN BIOTECHNOLOGY AND
PHARMACEUTICALS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE NORDIC COUNTRIES
http://ideas.repec.org/p/tik/inowpp/20090722.html
The main aim of this paper is to study innovative activity, as measured by patent indicators, in
pharmaceutical and biotechnological sectors in the Nordic Countries. The biotech sector in
general and pharmaceutical in particular is one of the areas selected for strategic investments
in every Nordic country. In terms of patents granted by country of inventors Denmark plays a
leading role followed by Sweden, while patenting activity in Finland and Norway is lower. A
concentration of patents towards a relative small number of assignees (mainly large biotech
and pharmaceutical companies based in Denmark and Sweden) is also observed. Norwegian
patents, as measured by patent citations indices, are more “important” than those of the other
countries, as well as in terms of relative size of innovations. Although there are other
contributing factors, our data suggest that geographical proximity to large pharmaceutical
companies plays a role in determining the relative success of national policies, and also that
new investment policies in countries where large biotech or pharmaceutical companies are not
established can yield positive returns in terms of innovation growth.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
23
Martha Judith PREVEZER, February 2009, PATENTING AND OPEN-SOURCE AND
EFFECTS ON INNOVATION AND RESEARCH: COMPARISON OF BIOTECHNOLOGY
WITH SOFTWARE AND OF AGRICULTURAL BIOTECH WITH BIOMEDICAL BIOTECH
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewabstract.php?id=5569&cf=32
This paper is an examination of the issues of patenting and open-source IPR and effects on
R&D and innovation. It looks at the arguments for and against patenting. It compares the
issues in open source software and open source biotechnology. It compares the structures of
the software and biotechnology industries and of the agricultural biotech with biomedical
biotech sectors to think about the difficulties or appropriateness of open source in these
different sectors.
EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE, 2008, BIOTECHNOLOGY IN EUROPEAN PATENTS -
THREAT OR PROMISE?
http://www.epo.org/news-issues/issues/biotechnology.html
Over the past decade, few technical fields have attracted more public attention than
biotechnology. Advances in medicine, agriculture, environmental engineering and other related
areas mean growing numbers of patent applications together with ever more products coming
onto the market. At the same time, the debate about the patentability of biotechnological
inventions continues.
Ralf D. KIRSCH, Claus BECKER and Thomas WESTPHAL, Euro|Biotech|News ,2008,
DEPENDENT PATENTS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY
http://www.glawe.de/downloads/In_Einsteins_Footsteps.pdf
Patents that cannot be used without violating the scope of another “ruling” patent are known
as “dependent patents”. Comments made by Albert Einstein about “dependent patents” in a
1919 patent case are still valid today. Dependent patents in the biotech field are often based
on a “selection invention”, where a selection of a narrow region having surprising effects is
made within a broader, better-known region (e.g. certain dose ranges of a pharmaceutical
formulation, enzymes, etc.). Selection inventions are usually patentable, and generally work
particularly well as Europe-wide patents. Unfortunately, one exception to the rule is Germany,
where national case law on selection inventions is more restrictive.
Bevis FEDDER, 2008, MARINE BIOTECHNOLOGY AND PATENTS
http://www.grin.com/e-book/120146/marine-biotechnology-and-patents
Major industries relating to inventions in marine biotechnology increasingly apply for patents.
Most patents are applied for inventions that are derived from terrestrial biotechnology.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
24
However, it is recognized that marine biotechnology offers a high potential to yield inventions
as well. Marine biotechnology can be divided into two main areas. First, development of
commercially viable drugs obtained from marine bioprospecting and, second, development of
marine genetically modified organisms for aquacultural and environmental purposes. A patent
means intellectual protection for an invention. Intellectual protection confers the exclusive right
upon the patent holder to sell the right of utilization of the invention to interested parties. The
selling of licenses provide one important way of receiving revenues for the research done for
the invention. The prospect of potential revenues provide the incentive for investment into
biotechnological research and subsequent patenting of inventions arising thereof. The overall
aim of this work is to illustrate the close interrelationship of science and law by using marine
biotechnology and patents as an example. Section two provides an overview on the scientific
side of marine biotechnology. It will define marine biotechnology and investigate current
advancements in marine biotechnology. Additionally, it roughly explains the international
patent system governing inventions in the biotechnological area and provide examples on
patents related to marine biotechnology. Section three illustrates the criticism expressed
against life form patents in marine as well as terrestrial biotechnology. It will describe the most
important cases that have fueled controversial debates on life form patents until today.
Sven HETMANK, Heike RÖDER, CRTD – Symposium On Patent Rights and Technology
Transfer, 2007, EUROPEAN PATENTS FOR STEM CELLS, BIOTECHNOLOGY AND
BIOMATERIALS
http://www.crt-dresden.de/fileadmin/Upload/RoederHetmank.pdf
Powerpoint presentation
Bart VAN LOOY, Tom MAGERMAN, Koenraad DEBACKERE, January 2006, DEVELOPING
TECHNOLOGY IN THE VICINITY OF SCIENCE: AN EXAMINATION OF THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCIENCE INTENSITY (OF PATENTS) AND TECHNOLOGICAL
PRODUCTIVITY WITHIN THE FIELD OF BIOTECHNOLOGY
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID874918_code444941.pdf?abstractid=87491
8
In this paper we investigate - on a country level - the relationship between the science intensity
of patents and technological productivity, taking into account differences in terms of scientific
productivity. The number of non patent references in patents is considered as an
approximation of the science intensity of technology whereas a country's technological and
scientific performance is measured in terms of productivity (i.e. number of patents and
publications per capita). We use USPTO patent-data pertaining to biotechnology for 20
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
25
countries covering the time period 1992-1999. Our findings reveal mutual positive relationships
between scientific and technological productivity for the respective countries involved. At the
same time technological productivity is associated positively with the science intensity of
patents. These results are confirmed when introducing time effects. These observations
corroborate the construct validity of science intensity as a distinctive indicator and suggest its
usefulness for assessing science and technology dynamics.
6. Patents in the pharmaceutical industry
Frederick M. ABBOTT, 2009, SEIZURE OF GENERIC PHARMACEUTICALS IN TRANSIT
BASED ON ALLEGATIONS OF PATENT INFRINGEMENT: A THREAT TO INTERNATIONAL
TRADE, Development and Public Welfare, World Intellectual Property Organization Journal
(WIPO), Vol. 1, p. 43
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1535521
This essay addresses the legitimacy of seizures by the customs authorities of some European
Union member states of pharmaceutical products moving in transit through European ports
and airports based on patents in force in the transit countries. Seizures have been directed to
products off-patent in the countries of manufacture and destination. EU member state customs
authorities have justified such seizures on the basis of a 2003 EU intellectual property border
enforcement regulation. The seizures have generated intense controversy at the WTO and
more widely among stakeholders interested in assuring affordable access to medicines. This
essay argues that seizure of generic pharmaceutical products in transit contravenes GATT
article V that obligates WTO Members to assure freedom of transit for goods passing through
ports and airports, and obligates Members to refrain from imposing unreasonable regulations
on such transit goods. It further argues that the seizures are fundamentally inconsistent with
the Paris Convention principle of independence of patents that recognizes the sovereign right
of states to adopt and implement patent protection as they consider appropriate, within the
framework of a general set of rules. Rules permitting enforcement of transit country patents
effectively deprives exporting and importing Paris Union and WTO Members of their right to
make determinations regarding patents, and represents an overextension of patent jurisdiction
by countries without a substantial interest in enforcement. Dutch court adoption of a
manufacturing fiction to justify transit seizures – pretending that subject pharmaceuticals are
manufactured in the Netherlands, when they clearly are not – represents a significant potential
threat to the conduct of international trade. Each WTO Member might pretend that all manner
of its domestic regulation – labor, environmental, social welfare – was violated in an exporting
country when goods were manufactured, allowing the goods of that country to be seized in
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
26
transit for a violation of transit country law. The international trading system could not function
reasonably in such a fiction-laden environment. The seizure of generic pharmaceutical
products in transit is inconsistent with the object and purpose of the Doha Declaration on the
TRIPS Agreement and Public Health that promotes access to medicines for all.
Birgitte ANDERSEN, Federica ROSSI, Johannes STEPHAN, August 2009, INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY (IP) MARKETPLACES AND HOW THEY WORK: EVIDENCE FROM GERMAN
PHARMACEUTICAL FIRMS
http://www.dime-eu.org/files/active/0/WP88-v2-IPR.pdf
By exploring the patterns of engagement in several intellectual property (IP) marketplaces on
the part of a sample of pharmaceutical firms based in Germany, the article attempts to shed
light on the strategic reasons which induce firms to participate in different IP marketplaces and
governance structures, often at the same time.
The scope of the analysis includes not only the conventional proprietary marketplaces (patents
and copyright) but also non-proprietary marketplaces (open source and trade in non-patented
technology). Marketplaces are viewed as institutions that allow firms to realize strategic value
but which, due to institutional inefficiencies, may fail to deliver firms the benefits they seek.
Therefore, the obstacles that prevent IP marketplaces from functioning smoothly and efficiently
are also investigated.
The analysis suggests that different marketplaces and governance forms contribute to the
realization of specific forms of value for firms, and suffer from specific failures. In-depth
investigation and comparison of IP marketplaces and governance forms is therefore a
promising and useful area for policy-relevant research.
Paul GROOTENDORST, July 2009, Patents, PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS OR
PRIZES: HOW SHOULD WE SUPPORT PHARMACEUTICAL INNOVATION? SEDAP
Research Paper No. 250
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/sedap
The question as to how society should support pharmaceutical (‘pharma’) innovation is both
pertinent and timely: Pharma drugs are an integral component of modern health care and hold
the promise to treat more effectively various debilitating health problems. The productivity of
the pharma R&D enterprise, however, has declined since the 1980s. Many observers question
whether the patent system is conducive to pharma innovation and point to several promising
alternative mechanisms. These mechanisms include both ‘push’ programs – subsidies
directed towards the cost of pharma R&D – and ‘pull’ programs – lumpsum and royalty-based
rewards for the outputs of pharma R&D, that is, new drugs. I review evidence why our current
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
27
system of pharma patents is defective and outline the various alternative mechanisms that
may spur pharma innovation more effectively.
Laura MAGAZZINI, Fabio PAMMOLLI, Massimo RICCABONI, Maria Alessandra ROSSI, April
2009, PATENT DISCLOSURE AND R&D COMPETITION IN PHARMACEUTICALS
http://ideas.repec.org/p/trt/disawp/0902.html
The prominent role played by patents within the pharmaceutical domain is unquestionable. In
this paper we take an unusual perspective and focus on a relatively neglected implication of
patents: the effect of patent-induced information disclosure (of both successes and failures) on
the dynamics of R&D and market competition. The study builds upon the combination of two
large datasets, linking the information about patents to firm level data on R&D projects and
their outcome.
Two case studies in the fields of anti-inflammatory compounds and cancer research
complement our analysis. We show the important role played by patent disclosure in shaping
firms technological trajectories through the possibility of reciprocal monitoring in a context of
parallel research efforts, and suggest the importance of enhancing the diffusion of information
concerning failures, not only to avoid wasteful duplication of innovative efforts, but also as a
tool for the identification of promising research trajectories.
Stuart J.H. GRAHAM, Matthew J. HIGGINS, August 2007, THE IMPACT OF PATENTING ON
NEW PRODUCT INTRODUCTIONS IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/4574
Since Comanor and Scherer (1969), researchers have been using patents as a proxy for new
product development. In this paper, we reevaluate this relationship by using novel new data.
We demonstrate that the relationship between patenting and new FDA approved product
introductions has diminished considerably since the 1950s, and in fact no longer holds.
Moreover, we also find that the relationship between R&D expenditures and new product
introductions is considerably smaller than previously reported. While measures of patenting
remain important in predicting the arrival of product introductions, the most important predictor
is the loss of exclusivity protection on a current product. Our evidence suggests that
pharmaceutical firms are acting strategically with respect to new product introductions. Finally,
we find no relationship between firm size and new product introductions.
Camilla LENZI, October 2006, KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER TROUGH JOB MOBILITY:
EVIDENCE FROM A SURVEY OF ITALIAN INVENTORS
http://ideas.repec.org/p/cri/cespri/wp182.html
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
28
Knowledge transfer issues are of great interest in researchers and policy makers agenda
because of its implications in terms of innovation diffusion and economic welfare. Among the
others, workers’ mobility, namely highly skilled ones, is considered as one of the most
influential channels for knowledge transmission.
This paper examines the patterns of mobility of a group of Italian inventors in the
pharmaceutical sector. New empirical evidence is discussed and results of the analysis
support the idea that workers’ mobility is an important mechanism of valuable knowledge
diffusion. Moreover, the paper critically discusses methodological issues concerning measures
of inventors’ mobility through patent statistics.
Stefano BRUSONI, Paola CRISCUOLO, Aldo GEUNA, January 2003, THE KNOWLEDGE
BASES OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST PHARMACEUTICALS GROUPS: WHAT DO PATENT
CITATIONS TO NON-PATENT LITERATURE REVEAL?, paper No. 90
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/ http://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ecinnt/v14y2005i5p395-415.html
This paper examines the knowledge bases of the world’s largest pharmaceuticals groups by
sales. It puts forward the concepts of knowledge breadth and depth as the relevant
dimensions along which knowledge bases can be mapped. Breadth is studied by analysing the
evolution of specialisation by scientific field over time. It hints at the widening range of bodies
of scientific and technological knowledge relevant to firms’ innovative activities. Depth (or
integration) is studied by analysing the evolution of specialisation across different typologies of
research. It hints at the complex, non-linear interdependencies that link the scientific and
technological domains. We develop the analyses on the strength of an original database of
33,127 EPO patents, and of 41,931 ‘non patent document’ citations (of which 19,494 were
identified as scientific articles included in the ISI databases). The groups studied seem to have
incrementally increased the breadth of their knowledge bases, moving toward the fields proper
of the new bio-pharmaceutical research trajectory. At the same time, some of the groups
studied exhibit remarkable depth in knowledge specialisation in particular fields such as
biotechnology, biochemical research and neurosciences. Finally, this paper also provides a
first methodological test of possible problems deriving from the use of ‘unidentified’ patent
citations (i.e. added by the examiners together with those proposed by the inventor). We
compare a random sample of these citations with a sample of citations explicitly added by the
original inventor, and compare the results in terms of scientific specialisations.
Bruce LEHMAN, 2003, THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY AND THE PATENT SYSTEM
http://users.wfu.edu/mcfallta/DIR0/pharma_patents.pdf
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
29
Patents are exclusive property rights in intangible creations of the human mind. They exist
only as provided in the laws of sovereign states, and can be enforced only to the extent that
application has been made and a patent granted covering the territory of an individual state.
Patent rights are limited in duration, with the global standard being 20 years from the date of
application. The new product, article of manufacture or process described in the patent
application must be something that has never been previously disclosed anywhere in the world
and something that would not be obvious to a person ordinarily skilled in the field involved.
Determinations of whether these requirements have been met are made by comparing the
claims of the patent applicant against the body of published literature in the field, including
previously issued patents. This process is called examination, and it assures that no one is
able to claim patent rights on anything that already is existence.
Patents work differently indifferent industries. In the electronic industry patents are often
shared among competitors through pooling or cross licensing. This sharing is necessary
because a given product often contains many patented technologies. However, in the
pharmaceutical, chemical and biotechnology industries the patent normally equals the product,
and protects the extensive investment in research and clinical testing required before placing it
on the market. Patent protection for chemical and pharmaceutical products is especially
important compared with other industries because the actual manufacturing process is often
easy to replicate and can be copied with a fraction of the investment of that required for the
research and clinical testing.
The extensive cost required to produce a new pharmaceutical product has meant that private
sector investment in pharmaceutical innovation has been disproportionately directed to
products meeting the needs of patients in developed countries, particularly in the United
States, which combines strong patent protection with a market free of price controls.
Until the TRIPS Agreement in 1994 many developing countries provided no patent protection
for pharmaceutical products. And, while countries that have joined the WTO have obligated
themselves to provide such protection, least developed countries are not required to meet this
obligation until 2016. The continuing lack of patent protection for pharmaceutical products
makes it very difficult to establish research-based industries in most developing countries.
Most medical research in these countries takes place in the public sector. The lack of any
means of patenting these inventions and the related lack of experience in licensing them to the
private sector, suppresses the development of commercial enterprises focused on alleviating
the disease burdens common to developing countries.
The controversy over availability of patented therapies for the treatment of HIV disease has
resulted renewed interest in the compulsory licensing of pharmaceutical products. After two
years of discussion, the WTO Council recently affirmed that the TRIPS Agreement permits
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
30
such compulsory licenses in health emergencies, even in cases where the compulsory license
is for an imported product. However, to date, no compulsory licenses actually have been
issued, even though the threat of compulsory licensing has been used as a means of seeking
lower prices.
One danger in compulsory licensing is that it will discourage further the commercial R & D
necessary to new drugs to fight global epidemics. Another danger is that compulsory licensing
can be used to seek price levels below what a given national market is capable of supporting,
further concentrating the burden of financing pharmaceutical innovation on developed country
consumers and discouraging development of drugs targeted at the disease burdens of
countries using compulsory licenses.
There are promising developments in countries such as India and Brazil that are beginning to
use patents to develop commercial pharmaceutical industries that produce products directed
at local diseases and available at price that patients in those countries can afford. Foundations
and nonprofit organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and OneWorld
Health, Inc. are supporting such efforts. These efforts show that developing countries have the
capacity to build research-intensive pharmaceutical industries capable of operating profitably
in the conditions of the local market. However, for such local industries to take root and grow,
effective patent protection must be made available, the commercialization of publicly funded
research must be encouraged, and compulsory licensing must be kept to a minimum. Wealthy
countries can assist this process by subsidizing local markets for the purchase of drugs
through the Global Fund, and by direct programs of assistance such as that recently proposed
by President Bush. Consumers in all countries can share the burden of drug development
equitably by paying for medicine at a price level consistent with their means, rather than
attempting to shift the costs of drug development to others.
7. Patents in nanotechnology
Fred JOUTZ, Laura SCHULTZ, October 2009, METHODS FOR IDENTIFYING EMERGING
GENERAL PURPOSE TECHNOLOGIES: A CASE STUDY OF NANOTECHNOLOGIES
http://www.akademiai.com/content/5332413628045051/
Nanotechnology is an emerging field of science with the potential to generate new and
enhance existing products and transform the production process. US patent data is used to
track the emergence of nanotechnologies since 1978. The nanotechnologies that have
undergone the most development are identified using patent citation data and co-citation
patterns of patents are examined to define clusters of related nanotechnologies. The potential
for economic impact of the emerging nanotechnologies is assessed using a generality index.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
31
Christopher PALMBERG, Hélène DERNIS, Claire MIGUET, 2009, NANOTECHNOLOGY: AN
OVERVIEW BASED ON INDICATORS AND STATISTICS, OECD Science, Technology and
Industry Working Papers, 2009/7, OECD publishing, © OECD
http://oberon.sourceoecd.org/vl=962727/cl=47/nw=1/rpsv/workingpapers/18151965/wp_5ksf76
8jcsr6.htm
Nanotechnology is commonly considered to offer considerable promise extending from
business opportunities throughout various industries to broader socio-economic benefits,
especially in the context of pressing global challenges such as those related to energy, health
care, clean water and climate change. Governments around the world have invested heavily in
R&D in this field and companies are also becoming increasingly engaged. Despite this
promise, investments and company involvement in nanotechnology developments are still
poorly monitored. The objective of this report is to provide a comprehensive overview of these
developments through a systematic and critical analysis of available indicators and statistics,
while acknowledging that there is a need for further work to both broaden the range of, and
develop further, nanotechnology metrics.
UK INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OFFICE, April 2009, UK INNOVATION
NANOTECHNOLOGY PATENT LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/informatic-nanotech.pdf
Patent data reflecting UK innovation in the field of nanotechnology was analysed and several
subsets considered separately:
UK innovation commercial organisations
University applicants
Global patent activity in nanotoxicity
These yield the following observations in respect of UK innovation:
UK strong overall in bionanotechnology
Commercial organisations prolific in medical and cosmetic applications
Universities strong in science-base research in nanostructures, physics and
electrical applications including scanning probes, light guides, semiconductors and
magnets
Most prolific commercial patents closely related to densely patented (established)
technology sectors
University patents spread very broadly across all sectors and tend to populate
underrepresented sectors supporting research bias
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
32
It was noted that whilst recent declines in nanotechnology patenting may be attributable to
patent publication delays, evidence in university patenting, and the GB patent bias in the
dataset suggested that the decline may be actual. If so, nanotechnology patent activity would
seem to have peaked in 2002.
Under technology breakdown, medical preparation including targeted drug delivery and
antibody directed enzyme therapy is seen to decline since prolific activity in the early 1990s.
On the other hand, cyclodextrins and medicinal preparations involving nanoparticles and/or
nanocapsules is recently resurgent. Activity in nanostructures and physics/electrical fields is
ongoing and may be attributable to recent university research pursuing these technologies.
The UK is underrepresented in nanotoxicity, but this appears to be a growth area, peaking
recently in 2005.
Patent portfolio (holdings) analysis suggests, despite the bias of patents in established areas
assigned to commercial organisations, that new entrants and exploratory research still form a
significant part of the UK nanotechnology landscape; 49% of patents are held within portfolios
of less than 20 nanotechnology patents.
Collaborative activity between applicants is noted although inventor collaborations are more
prolific. Universities are seen to collaborate widely suggesting a high degree of technology
transfer and/or spin out.
Patents held by non-commercial organisations make up 33% of the dataset. This suggests a
significant research and development activity-base with continuing commercialisation and
applications development.
EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE, 2008, NANOTECHNOLOGY IN EUROPEAN PATENTS -
CHALLENGE AND OPPORTUNITY
http://en.acarpatent.com/icerikg.asp?id=1577&smi=
Nanotechnology is considered by many to be one of the key technologies of this century, with
an expected market volume of EUR 1 trillion in 2015. In 2004, about EUR 8 billion was
invested in nanotechnology research and development worldwide. The European
Commission, realising the future importance of this new field, funds nanotechnology projects
with roughly EUR 500 million a year, an amount that is likely to double over the next decade or
two, according to an EC source.
The emergence of nanotechnology (“nano” is derived from the Greek word for dwarf) has been
followed closely by the European Patent Office (EPO).
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
33
Hsinchun CHEN, Mihail C. ROCO, Xin LI and Yiling LIN, April 2008, TRENDS IN
NANOTECHNOLOGY PATENTS
http://ai.arizona.edu/intranet/papers/NatureNano-April2008.pdf
An analysis of 30 years of data on patent publications from the US Patent and Trademark
Office, the European Patent Office and the Japan Patent Office confirms the dominance of
companies and selected academic institutions from the US, Europe and Japan in the
commercialization of nanotechnology.
Masatsura IGAMI, Teruo OKAZAKI, May 2007, CAPTURING NANOTECHNOLOGY'S
CURRENT STATE OF DEVELOPMENT VIA ANALYSIS OF PATENTS, STI working paper
2007/4, OECD
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/6/9/38780655.pdf
This analysis aims at capturing current inventive activities in nanotechnologies based on the
analysis of patent applications to the European Patent Office (EPO). The main findings are the
following: Nanotechnology: a set of technologies on the nanometre scale, not a single
technological field
• Nanotechnology is a multifaceted technology. At present, it consists of a set of technologies
on the nanometre scale rather than a single technological field. It covers “Electronics”,
“Optoelectronics”, “Medicine and biotechnology”, “Measurements and manufacturing”,
“Environment and energy”, and “Nano materials”.
• The majority of nanotechnologies, especially nanotechnologies related to “Electronics” and
“Optoelectronics”, are seemingly realised by a top-down process, where nano-structures are
developed through the improvement or advancement of existing technologies. Mutual
interactions among these top-down nanotechnologies appear to be weak, because they are
usually pushing the technological frontier within their own fields. As they build on cumulative
knowledge, top-down nanotechnologies are likely to have social and economic impacts in the
short and medium term.
• Another group of nanotechnologies is developed by a bottom-up process. The development
of such technologies has been particularly intense in the past decade and fuelled by scientific
discoveries such as carbon nanotubes and fullerenes. The increasing importance of
“Measurements and manufacturing” in the development of bottom-up nanotechnology was
also observed. At this stage, bottom-up nanotechnology is likely to have a relatively low impact
on application fields. It will take a while until bottom-up nanotechnologies have social and
economic impacts.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
34
• Nanotechnology not only covers a wide range of technologies, but also underpins the
development of many fields. High citations of nanotechnology patent applications are likely to
point to their high technological or economic value.
The recent rise of inventive activities in nanotechnology
• Nanotechnology patent applications to the EPO have been increasing since the 1980s, apart
from a temporary stagnation in the early 1990s. The increase, especially remarkable since the
end of the 1990s, has been higher than the average growth in the total number of EPO
applications.
• The United States, the European Union and Japan have almost the same share in
nanotechnology patent applications to the EPO, with the United States and Japan holding a
relatively higher share compared to their total EPO average.
• Higher education and government sectors are an important source of knowledge in
nanotechnology. Their shares in nanotechnology patent applications are notably larger than in
the EPO average for all patent applications. The contributions of these sectors have become
particularly important since the middle of the 1990s. Because of differences in national
science, technology and innovation systems, the shares of government and higher education
sectors vary across countries. The share of the government sector is the largest in France and
Japan. The higher education sector holds a relatively large share in the United Kingdom, the
United States and the Netherlands. The private non-profit sector holds the largest share in
Germany.
• The current development of nanotechnology relies strongly on countries’ existing
technologies and accumulated scientific knowledge. Japan has the largest share in
“Electronics”, “Optoelectronics”, and “Environment and energy”. The United States holds the
largest share in “Medicine and biotechnology”, “Measurements and manufacturing”, and “Nano
materials”. Countries’ shares in the nanotechnology patent applications in each application
field are strongly correlated with their shares in non-nanotechnology patent applications of the
same fields, except for the European Union. Other countries are increasingly contributing to
nanotechnology inventive activities, especially Korea which holds the fourth largest share in
nanotechnology related to “Electronics”.
Science fuels technological development in diverse ways
• Science fuels nanotechnology in diverse ways. An analysis of citations to non-patent
literature shows the importance of interactions between scientific and inventive activities in
nanotechnology. Three typologies of interactions can be distinguished. First, some inventive
activities are spurred by scientific activities. These technologies show a relatively large share
of non-patent literature in the initial stage of development, e.g. semiconductor devices.
Second, some technologies are continuously fuelled by science, as revealed by their almost
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
35
constant share of non-patent literature, e.g. drug delivery and applications of titanium dioxide
to sun screening. Finally, there are some technologies for which the linkage between science
and technology becomes important over time, e.g. carbon nanotubes.
• Scientific activities have a crucial role in knowledge creation and flows in nanotechnology.
Measurements of citation time-lags showed a remarkable shortening of the time-lags sparked
by scientific breakthroughs, e.g. the discovery of carbon nanotubes. Citation analysis shows
that the higher education sector produces a relatively high share of frequently cited patent
publications.
ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/indicators/docs/mapex_nano.pdf
8. Patents in environmental technologies
Bronwyn H. Hall, Christian Helmers, March 2011, INNOVATION AND DIFFUSION OF
CLEAN/GREEN TECHNOLOGY: CAN PATENT COMMONS HELP?
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16920
This paper explores the characteristics of 238 patents on 94 “inventions” contributed by major
multinational innovators to the “Eco-Patent Commons”, which provides royalty-free access to
third parties to patented climate change related innovations. By comparing the pledged
patents to other patents in the same technologies or held by the same multinationals, we
investigate the motives of the contributing firms as well as the potential for such commons to
encourage innovation and diffusion of climate change related technologies. This study,
therefore, indirectly provides evidence on the role of patents in the development and diffusion
of green technologies. More generally, the paper sheds light on the performance of hybrid
forms of knowledge management that combine open innovation and patenting.
OECD, June 2009, Working Party on National Environmental Policies, INDICATORS OF
INNOVATION AND TRANSFER IN ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND TECHNOLOGIES:
METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES
http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/displaydocumentpdf/?cote=ENV/EPOC/WPNEP(2009)1
/FINAL&doclanguage=en
This report is a contribution to the OECD Environment Directorate's work on environmental
policy and technological innovation (www.oecd.org/environment/innovation). It summarises
recent progress in the development of indicators of innovation and transfer in environmentally
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
36
sound technologies (EST). A number of alternative measures are discussed, and the
methodology for the development of indicators based on patent data is presented.
Yamei SUN, Yonglong LU, Tieyu WANGA, Hua MAABAND, Guizhen HE, October 2007,
PATTERN OF PATENT-BASED ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION IN CHINA
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V71-4R0CPN2-
2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=
1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=96e889ecfcdee237345e347fe45ea3b4#vt4
Technology innovation benign to environmental preservation is one of the key strategies to
address sustainable development. Understanding the pattern of environmental technology
innovation in a country is necessary for making policies and decisions in environment
management. Temporal and spatial distribution of environmental patents was analyzed to
identify innovation capability of environmental technologies in China. In terms of features the
patents were classified into invention, utility model (performance improvement) and design.
The patents belonged to the individuals, enterprises and research institutes in terms of
ownership. Through analyzing the pattern of environmental patents by features and
ownership, it was found that individual-owned patents and utility model patents accounted for
the biggest percentage of all the environmental patents applied by the domestic applicants.
Eastern provinces had the majority of environmental patents. The cluster analysis showed that
invention patents and enterprise-owned patents were concentrated in the eastern provinces. In
general, the innovation capability of environmental technologies in the east is strongest among
the regions. Though it had been improved in the last two decades, the percentage of invention
patents was still small and enterprises did not play the most important role in innovation.
Applications of environmental patents increased gradually but had a declining share of all the
patents in the last two decades. The innovation capability of environmental technologies in
China is still not strong on a global perspective.
Marcus WAGNER, 2007, working paper 07-14, THE LINK BETWEEN ENVIRONMENTAL
INNOVATION, PATENTS, AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
http://ideas.repec.org/p/aal/abbswp/07-14.html
This paper analyses empirically the relationship between environmental innovations,
environmental management and patenting. In particular it tests a number of propositions on
how environmental management systems and the interaction with environmentally more or
less concerned stakeholders are associated with the probability of firms to pursue innovation
in general (measured as patenting behaviour) and specifically environmental innovation
(measured as firm self-assessment and based on patent data). In applying a negative binomial
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
37
as well as binary discrete choice models the relationship is studied using data on German
manufacturing firms. As a novel and important insight, the study finds that environmental
innovation can be meaningfully identified using patent data and that environmental innovation
defined this way is less ubiquitous than self-reported environmental innovation. It also reveals
that the implementation level of environmental management systems has a positive effect
exclusively on environmental process innovation, whereas it is negatively associated with the
level of a firm’s general patenting activities. For environmental product innovation and
patented environmental innovations a positive relationship with environ-mentally concerned
and a negative link with environmentally neutral stakeholders is found.
Åsa GUILAMO, 2007, JAPANESE POLICY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL INNOVATION AS A
WAY TO REALIZE GROWTH A close-up study on current Japanese measures to nurture and
promote environmental technology
http://www.tillvaxtanalys.se/tua/export/sv/filer/publikationer-arkiv/itps/rapporter/2007/japanese-
policy-for-environmental-innovation-as-a-way-to-realize-growth-07.pdf
The overall aim of this study is to gain an understanding of the current development and
promotion of environmental technology in Japan, including governmental measures and, to
some extent, new initiatives from the private sector. Policies and research strategies are
analyzed from the viewpoint of gaining insight in both the underlying assessments as well as
the main aspirations for the future. Three questions are highlighted: What are the current
development trends in Japan for governmental R&D, research strategies and patent activity
relating to environmental technology? What are the other environmental technology promotion
measures of significance? And, finally, what are the current and what future strengths within
the field of environmental technology can be expected?
The overall purpose, based on an overview of Japanese success factors and future
aspirations, is to learn and gain experiences for potential future efforts in Sweden to foster
prolonged competitive advantages in the environmental technology sector. In this regard, the
relationship between environmental regulations and innovation, as well as the preconditions
for creating lead markets enabling domestic firms to export environmental innovations, are
elaborated upon.
To summarize, new visions in Japan’s third basic Science & Technology plan include a
strengthened focus on biomass & 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) as well as a more
comprehensive view on climate change issues. Ministries and research institutes are currently
working on how to mirror and realize the visions of the basic plan into their own strategies. The
ministries are highlighting applications of cutting-edge technologies and the need for an Asian
perspective. The research institutes to a large extent mirror biomass and the Asian focus.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
38
Other key features of the strategies are the emphasis on relating current undertakings to long-
term visions and the establishment of follow-up indicators, as done in e.g. the Ministry of
Environment’s Strategy on promotion of Environmental Research and Technology
Development.
According to patent data, Japan’s strong competence is currently concentrated to a few key
areas: air pollution control equipment, waste disposal and recycling. Weaker areas are water
pollution and noise protection. Looking into market sizes the following strong areas appear:
Renewable energy plants, Waste treatment and construction, and Instrument for Waste water
treatment. Bringing together these results with conclusions from competitiveness indexes and
(although limited) export statistics, the main fields of Japanese strengths can be sorted out as:
• Air pollution control equipment
• Waste disposal, treatment & management equipment
• Recycling
• Renewable energy plants
There are also high expectations for future success for so-called environment induced
businesses. There are expectations on strong future market growth in following areas:
manufacturing of air pollution control equipment and pollution preventing resources
(photocatalytic system, catalysts, emissions treatment devices etc.), education, training,
information supply (environmental reporting, auditing, consulting for obtaining ISO 14000 etc.),
environmental burden reducing and energy saving technology and processes, and energy
saving and energy management (fuel cell cars, new energy etc).
The Eco-Town concept, in spite of the program’s limited budget, is considered an effective
measure in Japan to promote local economic stimulation through fostering environmental
businesses. The Eco Town Program can, to some extent, be compared to the Local
Investment Programmes (LIP) and Climate Investment Programmes (KLIMP) in Sweden. As in
LIP and KLIMP, local governments/ municipalities are working together with local companies
and organisations. However, the Eco-Town program has had a much stronger focus on 3R-
related activities (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle), compared to the Swedish programs mainly aiming
at reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases. Official development assistance is
increasingly being used by Japanese actors as a tool to promote environmental technology
abroad, mainly in nearby Asia. Another innovative policy measure Japan has applied is the
environmental technology verification, in place as a pilot project since 2003 and planned as a
full-fledged program starting two years from now. The verification has already proven useful
for example to obtain knowledge/know-how for providing guidance and information on
procurement of environmental technologies. And, as developers were able to learn about
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
39
features and improvements in technology, these were further stimulated, thanks to publicity
from the program.
Reflecting on the Japanese experiences, life cycle analysis (LCA) seems to be an increasingly
important complementary tool to regulations for adjusting the imbalances of today’s price and
cost structures. Since LCA measures are also a part of Swedish environmental policy, the
Japanese experiences as a lead market in this regard may contribute to valuable learning. In
addition to LCA advancements, Japan will provide a favorable ground for development of
environmental innovations on e.g. it’s demographic situation, high degree of competition and
close monitoring activities from other countries; all important so-called demand factors for
national markets to become lead markets.
9. Patents and climate change
Hall, Bronwyn H., Helmers, Christian, 2013, INNOVATION AND DIFFUSION OF
CLEAN/GREEN TECHNOLOGY: CAN PATENT COMMONS HELP?
http://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeeman/v66y2013i1p33-51.html
This paper explores the characteristics of 238 patents on 90 inventions contributed by major
multinational innovators to the “Eco-Patent Commons”, which provides royalty-free access to
third parties to patented innovations on green technologies. We compare the pledged patents
to other patents in the same technologies or held by the same multinationals to investigate the
motives of the contributing firms as well as the potential for such commons to encourage
innovation and diffusion of climate change related technologies. We find pledged patents to
protect environmentally friendly technologies and to be of similar value as the average patent
in a pledging firm's patent portfolio but of lower value than other patents in their class. Our
analysis of the impact of the patent commons on diffusion of patented technologies suggests
that making patents accessible royalty-free did not result in any significant increase in diffusion
as measured by citing patents. This study, therefore, indirectly provides evidence on the role
of patents in the development and diffusion of green technologies.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
40
Antoine Dechezleprêtre, Matthieu Glachant, Yann Ménière, 2013, WHAT DRIVES THE
INTERNATIONAL TRANSFER OF CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION TECHNOLOGIES?
EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM PATENT DATA
http://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/enreec/v54y2013i2p161-178.html
Technology transfer plays a key role in global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In
this paper, we characterize the factors that promote or hinder the international diffusion of
climate-friendly technologies using detailed patent data from 96 countries for the period 1995–
2007. The data provide strong evidence that lax Intellectual Property regimes have a strong
and negative impact on the international diffusion of patented knowledge. Restrictions on
international trade and foreign direct investment also hinder the diffusion of climate-friendly
technologies. Surprisingly, local technological capabilities tend to discourage transfers. While
broad indicators of technology capabilities are expected to facilitate transfers, this latter result
stems from our technology-specific definition of local capabilities, which makes it possible to
capture a substitution effect between local and foreign inventions. Copyright Springer
Science+Business Media B.V. 2013
Ghafele, Roya & Gibert, Benjamin, Roya Ghafele, Benjamin Gibert October, 2011, A
CHANGING CLIMATE: STATISTICAL EVIDENCE OF THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
LANDSCAPE OF CLEAN ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES
http://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/36217.html
The intellectual property (IP) system plays an important role in the development and diffusion
of technologies by determining the institutional context in which transactions occur. This article
reviews the recent EPO report ‘Patents and Clean Energy Technologies: Bridging the Gap
between Evidence and Policy’ and offers further insights into the interplay between patents,
innovation in climate change mitigating technologies and access to technology. Empirical
evidence and analysis of patent trends forms the basis for understanding the spectrum of
policy choices available to combat climate change. In an effort to bridge the gap between
policy and evidence, the EPO report provides ample statistical analysis of existing patenting
trends, fleshes out the current patent landscape and assesses licensing trends in emerging
technologies relating to climate change. This review evaluates these statistical insights and
discusses the implications for both the developed and developing world. It aims to deepen
understanding of how intellectual property influences the development of markets for green
technologies.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
41
Matthieu GLACHANT, Antoine DECHEZLEPRÊTRE and Yann MÉNIÈRE, 2010, WHAT
DRIVES THE INTERNATIONAL TRANSFER OF CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION
TECHNOLOGIES? EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM PATENT DATA
http://www.feem.it/userfiles/attach/201021618384NDL2010-012.pdf
Using patent data from 66 countries for the period 1990–2003, we characterize the factors
which promote or hinder the international diffusion of climate-friendly technologies on a global
scale. Regression results show that technology-specific capabilities of the recipient countries
are determinant factors. In contrast, the general level of education is less important. We also
show that restrictions to international trade—e.g., high tariff rates—and lax intellectual property
regimes negatively influence the international diffusion of patented knowledge. A counter-
intuitive result is that barriers to foreign direct investments can promote transfers. We discuss
different possible interpretations.
10. Patents and energy technologies
Mark C SCARSI, Lawrence T KASS & Chris L HOLM, July/August 2009, PATENTS,
LITIGATION & LICENSING EMERGING ISSUES FOR CLEAN ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES
http://www.milbank.com/NR/rdonlyres/A745AF9D-1A44-4C90-B4C8-
A1D5EC679C2A/0/NACE_JulAug09.pdf
WIPO, April 2009, PATENT-BASED TECHNOLOGY ANALYSIS REPORT – ALTERNATIVE
ENERGY
http://www.wipo.int/patentscope/en/technology_focus/pdf/landscape_alternative_energy.pdf
Since the oil crises of the 1970s, the world has increasingly paid attention to the development
and diffusion of alternative energy sources in order to reduce dependency on fossil fuels.
During the oil crises, the primary focus was on increasing selfsufficiency with respect to energy
sources. By the 1990s, environmental concerns had taken the forefront, leading to a new
phase in the development of alternative energies. This new phase coincided with an increase
in the number of patent applications as well as the number of applicants involved in developing
alternative energy technologies, particularly from 2000 onwards, when a rapid acceleration in
patent activity took place. Among the major patent offices at which patent applications for
alternative energy technologies were filed, namely those of the United States, Japan, and
Germany, the distribution of applications among different areas of technology appears to be
related strongly to the countries’ geographic and resource situation as well as the distribution
of research and development budgets and supporting policies. Japan entered the field of
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
42
alternative energy development early and has seen strong patenting activity from domestic
applicants. Patent applications at the Japan Patent Office (JPO) have focused strongly on
solar power and hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. Patent applications at other patent
offices based on priority applications at the JPO appear to mirror this pattern. Patent
applications at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have been relatively
evenly distributed between domestic and foreign applicants. During the period from 2001 to
2005, the USPTO saw rapid growth both in the number of patent applications and the number
of applicants. The focus of patent applications filed at the USPTO has been primarily on bio
energy, geothermal energy, and hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. The European Patent
Office (EPO) and major European national patent offices have experienced a relatively steady
growth in both the number of patent applications and applicants since the 1990s. Patent
applications at the EPO and European national offices have tended to focus on different areas
of technology, depending on the office. Germany, the national office with the largest number of
applications filed, received patent applications primarily for wind power and solar energy
technologies. In Korea and China, most patent applications were filed by domestic applicants.
Though the initial number of applications filed at the patent offices of these countries was quite
small, the growth rate has been very high. While patenting activity at the Korean Intellectual
Property Office (KIPO) has focused on wind power and hydrogen and fuel cell technologies,
the largest number of applications at the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) in China
have been for solar energy and hydropower technologies.
Robert M. MARGOLIS and Daniel M. KAMMEN, July 1999, UNDERINVESTMENT: THE
ENERGY TECHNOLOGY AND R&D POLICY CHALLENGE
http://rael.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/old-site-files/1999/Margolis-Kammen-Science-
1999.pdf
This Viewpoint examines data on international trends in energy research and development
(R&D) funding, patterns of U.S. energy technology patents and R&D funding, and U.S. R&D
intensities across selected sectors. The data present a disturbing picture: (i) Energy
technology funding levels have declined significantly during the past two decades throughout
the industrial world; (ii) U.S. R&D spending and patents, both overall and in the energy sector,
have been highly correlated during the past two decades; and (iii) the R&D intensity of the
U.S. energy sector is extremely low. It is argued that recent cutbacks in energy R&D are likely
to reduce the capacity of the energy sector to innovate. The trends are particularly troubling
given the need for increased international capacity to respond to emerging risks such as global
climate change.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
43
David POPP, August 1998, THE EFFECT OF NEW TECHNOLOGY ON ENERGY
CONSUMPTION
http://www2.ku.edu/~kuwpaper/Archive/papers/Pre1999/wp1998_5.pdf
This paper uses patent data to estimate the effect of new technologies on energy
consumption. A stock of energy knowledge is created for each of 13 energy-intensive
industries. The median present value of long run savings from a new patent is nearly 9 million
dollars. The results are used to simulate the effect of a ten-percent energy tax. Although factor
substitution is found to play a greater role than induced innovation in the short run, the energy
savings from induced innovation play a much larger role than factor substitution in the long
run, due to the cumulative nature of research.
Clean Energy Patent Growth Index Presented by the Cleantech Group- Heslin Rothenberg
Farley & Mesiti P.C.
The CLEAN ENERGY PATENT GROWTH INDEX (CEPGI), published quarterly by the
CLEANTECH GROUP at Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti P.C, provides an indication of the
trend of innovative activity in the Clean Energy sector.
GREEN PATENT BLOG® covering intellectual property issues in clean technology
Eric Lane is a patent attorney at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego, where he is
in the Intellectual Property and Climate Change & Clean Technologies practice groups.
11. Patents and eco-innovations/environment
Matthieu GLACHANT, Antoine DECHEZLEPRETE, Ivan HASCIC, Nick JOHNSSTONE &
Yann MENIERE, 2009. "INVENTION AND TRANSFER OF CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION
TECHNOLOGIES ON A GLOBAL SCALE," Working Papers 2009.82, Fondazione Eni Enrico
Mattei.
http://www.feem.it/userfiles/attach/2009111910454482-09.pdf
Accelerating the development of less GHG intensive technologies and promoting their global
diffusion - in particular in fast-growing emerging economies - is imperative in achieving the
transition to a low-carbon economy. Consequently, technology is at the core of current
discussions about the post-Kyoto regime. The purpose of this study is to fuel this discussion
by providing an in-depth analysis of the geographic distribution of climate mitigation inventions
since 1978 and their international diffusion on a global scale. We use the EPO/OECD World
Patent Statistical Database (PATSTAT) which includes patents from 81 national and
international patent offices. Note that the Least Developed Countries patent a negligible
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
44
number of inventions, meaning that the geographical scope of the study is limited to
industrialized countries and emerging economies. In this study, patent counts are used to
measure the output of innovation but also the transfer of inventions across borders on the
ground that an innovator patents his/her invention in a foreign country because he/she plans to
exploit it commercially there. They are the only indicator available today that provides a
comprehensive view on innovation and technology diffusion on a global scale. Patent data
also present drawbacks. First, patents are not the only tool available to inventors to protect
their inventions. Second, successful technology transfers also involve the transfer of know-
how. Still one can reasonably assume that patent counts are positively correlated to the
quantity of non-patented innovations and transfers. We consider 13 different classes of
technologies with significant global GHG emission abatement potentials, and analyze inventive
activities and international technology transfer between 1978 and 2003. The technologies
considered are seven renewable energy technologies (wind, solar, geothermal, ocean energy,
biomass, waste-to-energy, and hydropower), methane destruction, climate-friendly cement,
energy conservation in buildings, motor vehicle fuel injection, energy-efficient lighting and
Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS).
Impact of the Kyoto Protocol
Statistics suggest that the Protocol has induced more innovation in the recent period. While
innovation in climate change technologies and innovation in all technologies were growing at
the same pace until the mid-nineties, the former is now developing much faster. Between 1998
and 2003, innovation in climate mitigation technologies has been growing at the average
annual rate of 9%. This increase has taken place in Annex 1 countries which have ratified the
Kyoto Protocol but not in Australia and in the USA.
In contrast, there is no visible effect of the Kyoto protocol on technology transfer: international
technology flows have been increasing in the recent period, but the growth rate is the same as
the average.
Main inventor countries
Innovation in climate change technologies is highly concentrated in three countries—Japan,
Germany and the USA—which account for two thirds of total innovations in the thirteen
technologies. The performance of Japan is particularly impressive as it ranks first in twelve
technology fields out of 13. In average it accounts for 40 percent of worldwide innovation.
Surprisingly, the innovation performance of emerging economies is far from being negligible as
China, South Korea and Russia are respectively the fourth, fifth and sixth largest innovators.
They globally represent about 15% of total inventions.
International technology diffusion
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
45
Do these new technologies cross national borders? The export rate—measured by the share
of inventions that are patented in at least two countries—is around 25%. This sounds small,
but it is only a few percent below the rate for all technologies. International transfers mostly
occur between developed countries (75% of exported inventions). Exports from developed
countries to emerging economies are still limited (18%) but are growing rapidly. This suggests
a huge potential for the development of North-South transfers. Although China, Russia and
South Korea are major innovators, flows between emerging economies are almost non-
existent. Accordingly, there also exists a huge potential for South-South exchanges—
particularly given that these countries may have developed technologies that are better
tailored to the needs of developing countries.
Timothy FOXON, Maj MUNCH ANDERSEN, June 2009, THE GREENING OF INNOVATION
SYSTEMS FOR ECO-INNOVATION – TOWARDS AN EVOLUTIONARY CLIMATE
MITIGATION POLICY
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewpaper.php?id=500463&cf=32
Policies for mitigating climate change have never received as much attention worldwide as
now. At the same time another upcoming policy trend is the increasing synthesis between
innovation- and environmental policy, a synthesis that is captured by the eco-innovation
concept. However, the climate and innovation policy areas are currently little aligned and have
in fact been considered opposites until very recently.
The paper seeks to identify how evolutionary economic theory, hitherto very little applied to the
environmental area, may guide the development of climate policies and eco-innovation
policies in important ways. The paper argues that the evolutionary economic perspective
entails a new policy rationale which not only puts more emphasis on greening of markets as a
means towards reaching climate goals but also shifts the representation of the economy
towards a more dynamic one. The policy implications of this shift are considerable and have
hitherto gained little attention.
A deeper understanding of eco-innovation dynamics is strongly needed for informing both
climate and innovation policies. The paper argues that the fact that environmental problems
have largely been neglected by evolutionary economic research illustrates a lack of genuine
systems thinking within this line of thought, despite the prominence of systems ideas. The
paper proposes a strong paradigmatic explanation of eco-innovation based on a combination
of innovation systems thinking and an evolutionary capabilities approach.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
46
Vanessa OLTRA, René KEMP, Frans P. de VRIES, April 2009, PATENTS AS A MEASURE
FOR ECO-INNOVATION
http://www.dime-eu.org/wp25
This paper examines the usefulness of patent analysis for measuring eco-innovation. The
overall conclusion is that patents are a useful means for measuring environmentally motivated
innovations, such as pollution control technologies and green energy technologies, and for
general purpose technologies with environmental benefits.
For these types of innovations it is acceptable to use patent analysis, provided they are
carefully screened. Patent analysis may be used for measuring five attributes of
ecoinnovation: (1) eco-inventive activities in specific technology fields, (2) international
technological diffusion, (3) research and technical capabilities of companies, (4) institutional
knowledge sources of eco-innovation, and (5) technological spillovers and knowledge flows.
Up until now it is mainly used for measuring eco-inventive activity.
Anthony ARUNDEL and René KEMP, with contributions from Tomoo MACHIBA and Nick
JOHNSTONE of the OECD, 2009, MEASURING ECO-INNOVATION
http://www.merit.unu.edu/
In this paper we offer a discussion of eco-innovation and methods for measuring it. Eco-
innovation is a new concept of great importance to business and policy makers, covering
many innovations of environmental benefit. Past research and measurement activity primarily
focused on pollution control and abatement activities or on the environmental goods and
services sector. We argue that eco-innovation research and data collection should not be
limited to such environmentally motivated innovations, but should encompass all products,
processes, or organizational innovations with environmental benefits. Attention should be
broadened to include innovation in or oriented towards resource use, energy efficiency,
greenhouse gas reduction, waste minimization, reuse and recycling, new materials (for
example nanotechnology-based) and eco-design. Research should cover the drivers, patterns,
and benefits of eco-innovation for each of these applications, since these factors are likely to
differ. For measuring eco-innovation, no single method or indicator is likely to be sufficient. In
general, one should therefore apply different methods for analyzing eco-innovation – to see
the “whole elephant” instead of just a part. More effort should be devoted towards direct
measurement of eco-innovation outputs using documentary and digital sources to complement
the current emphasis on innovation inputs such as R&D or patents. Innovation can also be
measured indirectly from changes in resource efficiency and productivity. These two avenues
are underexplored and should be given more attention in order to augment our rather narrow
knowledge basis.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
47
Tomoo MACHIBA, OECD DSTI, December 2008, PROMOTING ECO-INNOVATION FOR
GREEN ECONOMY AN OVERVIEW OF THE OECD PROJECT ON SUSTAINABLE
MANUFACTURING & ECO-INNOVATION
http://www.oecd.org/department/0,3355,en_2649_34273_1_1_1_1_1,00.html
Powerpoint presentation
Alasdair REID, Michal MIEDZINSKI, May 2008, SECTORAL INNOVATION WATCH IN
EUROPE ECO-INNOVATION, FINAL REPORT
http://www.europe-innova.org/
Detailed insights into sectoral innovation performance are essential for the development of
effective innovation policy at regional, national and European levels. The Sectoral Innovation
Watch project provides policy-makers and stakeholders with a better understanding of sectoral
drivers, barriers and challenges for innovation across the EU.
A fundamental question is to what extent and why innovation performance differs across
sectors. The project develops new indicators and innovation models at sectoral level, performs
statistical analysis and studies qualitative aspects.
Sharing eco-friendly patents on global basis (see
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/etap/index_en.htm )
Global businesses are set to share patents with other companies to reduce environmental
impacts. This will help develop products, processes and services protecting the environment.
Eco-Patent Commons is sharing patents to encourage researchers, entrepreneurs and
companies of all sizes in any industry to create, apply and further develop their consumer or
industrial products, processes and services in a way that will help protect and respect the
environment. This effort was initiated by the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development (WBCSD, www.wbscd.org) and IBM, in partnership with Nokia, Pitney Bowes
and Sony. The patent portfolio is available on a public website (http://www.wbcsd.org/web/epc)
hosted by the WBCSD. It focuses on environmental matters and innovations in manufacturing
or business processes where the solution provides an environmental benefit such as reducing
hazardous waste generation, energy use or water consumption.
Environmental benefits expected include:
· Energy conservation or improved energy or fuel efficiency;
· Pollution prevention;
· Use of environmentally preferable materials or substances;
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
48
· Reduction of water or materials use; and
· Increased recycling opportunities.
Membership open to all
Membership in the Eco-Patent Commons is open to all individuals and companies pledging
one or more patents. The founding companies and the WBCSD are inviting other interested
companies to become members and participate in this initiative promoting innovation and
collaboration to help protect the planet. “Innovation to address environmental issues requires
the application of technology as well as new models for sharing intellectual property among
companies in different industries,” says Dr John E. Kelly III, director of IBM Research. “In
addition to enabling new players to engage in protecting the environment, the free exchange of
valuable intellectual property will accelerate work on the next level of environmental
challenges. We strongly urge other companies to contribute to the Eco-Patent Commons.”
“Environmental issues have great potential to help us discover the next wave of innovation
because they force us all to think differently about how we make, consume and recycle
products,” adds Donal O’Connell, Director of Intellectual Property, Nokia. “We have pledged a
patent designed to help companies safely re-use old mobile phones by transforming them into
new products. Recycling the computing power of mobile phones in this way could significantly
increase reuse of materials in the electronics industry.”
More information:
The Eco-Patent Commons: A leadership opportunity for global business to protect the planet
(http://www.wbcsd.org/DocRoot/QdMK547NiducgYLJhvSL/Eco-
Patent%20Commons%20Brochure_011008.pdf )
René KEMP (project leader), June 2008, Final Report “MEASURING ECO-INNOVATION
(MEI)”
http://www.merit.unu.edu/MEI/papers/Final%20report%20MEI%20project%20June%203%202
008.pdf
René KEMP (project leader), June 2008, Policy Brief “MEASURING ECO-INNOVATION
(MEI)”
http://www.merit.unu.edu/MEI/papers/Policy%20Brief%20MEI%20June%202008.pdf
MEI is a project for DG Research of the European Commission (Call FP6-2005-SSP-5A, Area
B, 1.6, Task 1). The project has been carried out in collaboration with Eurostat, the European
Environment Agency (EEA) and the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European
Commission. MEI offers a conceptual clarification of eco-innovation (developing a typology)
and discusses possible indicators, leading to proposals for eco-innovation measurement.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
49
Objectives
• To offer a conceptual clarification of eco-innovation (developing a typology) based on an
understanding of innovation dynamics.
• To identify and discuss the main methodological challenges in developing indicators and
statistics on eco-innovation and to explore how they may be overcome.
• To propose possible indicators for measuring relevant aspects of eco-innovation, taking into
account data availability issues; and to define future research needs for addressing these
methodological challenges in developing eco-innovation indicators; and to set up guidance for
the most feasible route for implementation of eco-innovation indicators on the time scale
envisaged.
12. Patents and software
Ahmed DRIOUCHI, Molk KADIRI and Moulay Abdelaziz ALAOUI BELGHITI, March 2010,
DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS PROTECTION
AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: THE CASE OF DIGITAL PIRACY IN THE SOUTH
MEDITERRANEAN COUNTRIES. (Unpublished)
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/21609/1/MPRA_paper_21609.pdf
The potential benefits that could be gained from information technologies in South
Mediterranean economies are constrained by both DRM and institutional protection related to
Intellectual Property Rights. But, pervasive piracy can appear to be a major obstacle to access
these benefits. This paper through a simplified theoretical decision model attempts to suggest
foundations to reveal levels of protection rates. This is followed by an empirical assessment of
the likely effects of different macroeconomic variables in the context of selected South
Mediterranean countries using software piracy data and the protection rates derived from the
above model. This is intended to reveal the most important variables that drive software
protection. The results attained show how protection should be strengthened through further
investments in knowledge and through openness to foreign direct investments that lead to
superior economic outcomes.
Birgitte ANDERSEN, Ainurul ROSLI, Federica ROSSI, Waraporn YANGSAP, August 2009,
PROPRIETARY AND NON-PROPRIETARY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MARKETPLACES:
THEIR FUNCTIONING AND EFFICIENCY AS EXPERIENCED BY UK SOFTWARE FIRMS
http://www.dime-eu.org/files/active/0/WP89-v2-IPR.pdf
By exploring the patterns of engagement in several intellectual property (IP) marketplaces on
the part of a sample of software firms based in the UK, the article attempts to shed light on the
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
50
strategic reasons which induce firms to participate in different IP marketplaces and
governance structures, often at the same time.
The scope of the analysis includes not only the conventional proprietary marketplaces (patents
and copyright) but also non-proprietary marketplaces (open source and trade in non-patented
technology). Marketplaces are viewed as institutions that allow firms to realize strategic value
but which, due to institutional inefficiencies, may fail to deliver firms the benefits they seek.
Therefore, the obstacles that prevent IP marketplaces from functioning smoothly and efficiently
are also investigated.
The analysis suggests that different marketplaces and governance forms contribute to the
realization of specific forms of value for firms, and suffer from specific failures. In-depth
investigation and comparison of IP marketplaces and governance forms is therefore a
promising and useful area for policy-relevant research.
James BESSEN, 2006, A COMMENT ON “DO PATENTS FACILITATE FINANCING IN THE
SOFTWARE INDUSTRY?”
http://www.researchoninnovation.org/comment%20on%20Mann.pdf
“Do Patents Facilitate Financing in the Software Industry?” by Ronald J. Mann contributes
empirical evidence to our understanding of how software startups use patents. However, a
close examination of the actual empirical findings in this paper points to rather different
conclusions than those that Mann draws, namely: few software startups benefits from software
patents and patents are not widely used by software firms to obtain venture financing. Indeed,
among other things, the paper reports that 80% of venture-financed software startups had not
acquired any patents within four years of receiving financing.
James BESSEN, Robert M. HUNT, 2004, AN EMPIRICAL LOOK AT SOFTWARE PATENTS
http://www.philadelphiafed.org/research-and-data/publications/working-papers/2003/wp03-
17.pdf
U.S. legal changes have made it easier to obtain patents on inventions that use software.
Software patents have grown rapidly and now comprise 15 percent of all patents. They are
acquired primarily by large manufacturing firms in industries known for strategic patenting; only
5 percent belong to software publishers. The very large increase in software patent propensity
over time is not adequately explained by changes in R&D investments, employment of
computer programmers, or productivity growth. The residual increase in patent propensity is
consistent with a sizeable rise in the cost effectiveness of software patents during the 1990s.
We find evidence that software patents substitute for R&D at the firm level; they are
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
51
associated with lower R&D intensity. This result occurs primarily in industries known for
strategic patenting and is difficult to reconcile with the traditional incentive theory of patents.
13. Patent value
Nicolas van Zeebroeck, Bruno van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, THE VULNERABILITY OF
PATENT VALUE DETERMINANTS
http://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ecinnt/v20y2011i3p283-308.html
This paper presents a critical survey of the literature on the determinants of patent value. The
contributions to the literature are essentially two-fold. First, significant inconsistencies across
existing studies are underlined. Second, a sensitivity analysis shows strong dependencies of
several 'classical' results on two main empirical dimensions, namely the choice of the
dependent variables (indicator of patent value) and the sampling methodology. The new
indicators of filing strategies put forward by van Zeebroeck and van Pottelsberghe de la
Potterie (this journal) turn out to be the most robust and stable determinants.
Philipp G. Sandner, Joern Block, January 2011, THE MARKET VALUE OF R&D, PATENTS
AND TRADEMARKS
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1469705
This paper investigates the effects of trademarks on the market value of firms. The results
show that trademarks have a positive effect on firm value. Next, the firms’ market values are
regressed on indicators of trademark value such as trademark seniorities, the number of
oppositions filed, and the number of product and services classes covered. We found that they
at least partially reflect trademark value.
Alessandro NUVOLARI, Valentina TARTARI, March 2009, MR. WOODCROFT AND THE
VALUE OF ENGLISH PATENTS, 1617-1841
http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/files/2009-03.pdf
We examine the potentialities of a new indicator for measuring the value of English patents in
the period 1617-1841. The indicator is based on the relative visibility of each individual patent
in the contemporary technical and legal literature as summarized in Bennet Woodcroft's
Reference Index of Patents of Invention. We conclude that the indicator provides a reasonable
proxy for the value of patents and that it can be usefully employed to shed light on the timing
and nature of innovation during the Industrial Revolution. In particular, our indicator offers a
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
52
suitable reconciliation between the patent records evidence and the Crafts-Harley view of the
Industrial Revolution.
Nicolas VAN ZEEBROECK, May 2008, THE PUZZLE OF PATENT VALUE INDICATORS
http://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/07-023.html
This paper reviews and analyses several issues in the measurement and interpretation of
patent value indicators over a large database. Each of the five most classical indicators
proposed in the literature (family sizes, renewals, grant decision outcomes, forward citations,
and oppositions) witnesses the well-known properties of patent value: a severe skewness and
significant country and technology variations. Nonetheless, a high degree of orthogonality
appears between them as well as opposite trends in their evolution, suggesting that they
actually capture different dimensions of a patent’s value and therefore do not always pinpoint
the same patents as being the most valuable. To maximize the chances of capturing all
potentially valuable patents in a large database, a composite index is proposed, which reflects
the intensity of the patent value signal provided by all five constituting indicators. Its declining
trend reflects a rarefaction of this signal on average, leading to different plausible
interpretations.
James BESSEN, November 2007, ESTIMATES OF PATENT RENTS FROM FIRM MARKET
VALUE
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=912661
The value of patent rents is an important quantity for policy analysis. However, estimates in
the literature based on patent renewals might be understated. Market value regressions could
provide validation, but they have not had clear theoretical foundations for estimating patent
rents. I develop a simple model to make upper bound estimates of patent rents using
regressions on Tobin’s Q. I test this on a sample of US firms and find it robust to a variety of
considerations. My estimates correspond well with estimates based on patentee behavior
outside the pharmaceutical industry, but renewal estimates might be understated for
pharmaceuticals.
Bronwyn H. HALL, Grid THOMA, Salvatore TORRISI, September 2007, THE MARKET
VALUE OF PATENTS AND R&D: EVIDENCE FROM EUROPEAN FIRMS, NBER Working
Paper No. 13426
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13426
This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the private value of patents and R&D in
European firms during the period 1991-2004. We explore the relationship between firm's stock
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
53
market value, patents, and "quality"-weighted patents issued by the European Patent Office
(EPO) and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). We find that Tobin's q is positively
and significantly associated with R&D and patent stocks, but that only those patents taken out
in both patent offices or at the USPTO alone seem to be valued. Either forward citations or a
composite quality indicator based on forward citations, family size and the number of technical
fields covered by the patent are modestly informative for value. Software patents account for a
rising share of total patents in the USPTO and EPO. Moreover, some scholars of innovation
and intellectual property rights argue that software and business methods patents on average
are of poor quality and that these patents are applied for merely to build portfolios rather than
for protection of real inventions. We found that such patents are considerably more valuable
than ordinary patents, especially if they are taken out in the U.S. However their quality
indicators are no more valuable than those of other patents, suggesting that their primary
purpose may be to increase the size of the patent portfolio.
Mark A. LEMLEY, Nathan MYHRVOLD, August 2007, HOW TO MAKE A PATENT MARKET
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1012726&rec=1&srcabs=1020276
Imagine a stock market in which buyers and sellers couldn't find out the prices at which
anyone else sold a share of stock. If you wanted to buy (or sell) a share of stock, you'd have to
guess what it was worth. The result, everyone would agree, would be massively inefficient.
Willing buyers and sellers would often miss each other. Patents, however, exist in just such a
blind market. Want to know if you're getting a good deal on a patent license, or acquiring rights
in a technology? Too bad. Even if that patent or ones like it have been licensed dozens of
times before, the terms of those licenses, including the price itself, will almost invariably be
confidential. Patent owners who want to put their rights up for sale face the same problem.
The result? Willing licensors and licensees can't find each other. Patent auctions often fizzle,
because without a thick market - one with an array of buyers and sellers bidding on price - no
one can know whether they are getting a steal or being had. When parties do license patents,
the prices are (to the extent we can tell) all over the map. And the rest of the world has no idea
what those prices are. This in turn means that courts lack adequate benchmarks to determine
a “reasonable royalty” when companies infringe patents.
The solution is straightforward: require publication of patent assignment and license terms.
Doing so won't magically make the market for patents work like a stock exchange; there will
still be significant uncertainty about whether a patent is valid and what it covers. But it will
permit the aggregate record of what companies pay for rights to signal what particular patents
are worth and how strong they are, just as derivative financial instruments allow markets to
evaluate and price other forms of risk. It will help rationalize patent transactions, turning them
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
54
from secret, one-off negotiations into a real, working market for patents. And by making it clear
to courts and the world at large what the normal price is for patent rights, it will make it that
much harder for a few unscrupulous patent owners to hold up legitimate innovators, and for
established companies to systematically infringe the rights of others.
James BESSEN, 2006, THE VALUE OF U.S. PATENTS BY OWNER AND PATENT
CHARACTERISTICS
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=949778
This paper uses renewal data to estimate the value of U.S. patents, controlling for patent and
owner characteristics. Estimates of U.S. patent value are substantially larger than estimates
for European patents, however, the ratio of U.S. patent value to R&D for firms is only about
3%. Patents issued to small patentees are much less valuable than those issued to large
corporations, perhaps reflecting imperfect markets for technology. Litigated patents are more
valuable, as are highly cited patents. However, patent citations explain little variance in value,
suggesting limits to their use as a measure of patent quality.
Elefthérios SAPSALIS, Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE DE LA POTTERIE, Ran NAVON,
Research Policy June 2006, ACADEMIC VS. INDUSTRY PATENTING: AN IN-DEPTH
ANALYSIS OF WHAT DETERMINES PATENT VALUE
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733306001612
This paper compares corporate and academic patents and tests whether they have similar
value distributions and share common determinants of value. The empirical results based on
an in-depth analysis of 400 biotech patents applied for by Belgian universities and firms lead to
the following observations: (i) academic and corporate patent value distributions have similar
levels of ‘skewness’; (ii) the identification of the institutional origin of knowledge allows for an
improved understanding of the value determinants and (iii) there is a need to focus on
researchers with a high scientific profile in order to crystallize their tacit knowledge into high
value patents.
Alfonso GAMBARDELLA, Paola GIURI, Alessandra LUZZI, February 2006, THE MARKET
FOR PATENTS IN EUROPE
http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/files/2006-04.pdf
By using the PatVal-EU dataset we find that the most important determinant of patent licensing
is firm size. Patent breadth, value, protection, and other factors suggested by the literature
also have an impact, but not as important. In addition, most of these factors affect the
willingness to license, but not whether a license actually takes place.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
55
We discuss why this suggests that there are transaction costs in the markets for technology.
The issue is important because many potential licenses are not licensed suggesting that the
markets for technology can be larger, with implied economic benefits.
Shigeki KAMIYAMA, Jerry SHEEHAN, Catalina MARTINEZ, OECD, 2006, DSTI/DOC(2006)5
VALUATION AND EXPLOITATION OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
http://www.oecd.org/sti/working-papers
As firms shift to more open models of innovation based on collaboration and external sourcing
of knowledge, they are exploiting their intellectual property, notably patents, not only by
incorporating protected inventions into new products, processes and services, but also by
licensing them to other firms or public research organisations (PROs), using them as
bargaining chips in negotiations with other firms, and as a means of attracting external
financing from banks, venture capitalists and other sources.
These developments raise the importance of efficient technology markets and effective IP
valuation schemes. Efficient technology markets can improve innovation processes by
facilitating exchanges of patented inventions (via sale or licensing) among private and public
sector actors that can put inventions in the hands of those most able to commercialise them.
Improved valuation can facilitate not only technology transfer, but a full range of channels for
exploiting IP such as decision to file a patent and investment in firms which hold patents.
This paper reviews recent evidence and analyses about the current status of valuation and
exploitation of patents, with the aim of informing development of related policy. First, it
examines the broadening set of channels through which firms aim to exploit their IP. It
complements this firm-level perspective with a review of macroeconomic statistics related to
the development of technology markets in major geographic regions. Second, the paper
reviews various approaches to the valuation of patents. Finally, the paper examines the range
of policy initiatives that have been undertaken by governments of OECD countries to foster
and improve the valuation and the exploitation of patents.
J. Timothy CROMLEY, November 2004, 20 STEPS FOR PRICING A PATENT - TO VALUE
AN INVENTION YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND IT
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2004/Nov/20StepsForPricingAPatent.htm
Ian COCKBURN, ASSESSING THE VALUE OF A PATENT: THINGS TO BEAR IN MIND
(WIPO)
http://www.wipo.int/sme/en/documents/valuing_patents.htm
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
56
One truism that is often quoted is that, “if it is worth copying, it is worth protecting”. This simple
piece of homespun philosophy is one of the first questions that any inventor or innovator
should ask. If the answer that returns is a bleak NO, then the matter can be laid to rest and
greener pastures explored. More often than not though, the answer is an emphatic YES!
Further questions then arise such as how much will it cost? And what sort of return can I
expect on my efforts, that is, how much is my patent worth?
This article attempts to provide an answer to the latter question and is written to encourage
start-up companies to look seriously at the value of their innovations and to consider ways that
will make the most of their intellectual and capital investment. The article focuses mainly on
patents. For answers relating to the costs involved in gaining patent protection, consult an
intellectual property (IP) professional in the relevant jurisdiction.
Patents are only one of many kinds of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) and are granted for
new products or for new processes for making known products better. They give the owner an
exclusive right to exploit those new products or processes for a maximum of 20 years. They
are, therefore, acknowledged as a powerful commercial tool and an important link between
Research & development and the marketplace.
But patents are much more than just that, and can be used to identify and develop new
brands, to maintain present markets or create new ones. They can be used to raise
development finance and can also be used to generate new income streams through
licensing, or to create a business presence in countries without incurring a large expenditure
on bricks and mortar entities of your own. When used wisely, patents may even be the
difference between a company’s success and its failure.
THE VALUE OF EUROPEAN PATENTS EVIDENCE FROM A SURVEY OF EUROPEAN
INVENTORS FINAL REPORT OF THE PATVAL EU PROJECT
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/indprop/docs/patent/studies/patentstudy-report_en.pdf
The full scale PatVal-EU survey was conducted from May 2003 to January 2004, and was
directed to the inventors of 27,531 patents granted at the EPO with priority date in 1993-1997
located in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. The
targeted number of patents for which we expected the inventors to respond was 10,000. In the
end the European inventors responded to 9,216 questionnaires covering 9,017 patents.
The distribution of the surveyed patents across countries is the following: 3,346 patents are
invented in Germany, 1,486 in France, 1,542 in the UK, 1,250 in Italy, 1,124 in the
Netherlands, and 269 in Spain. The number of patents surveyed in each country mirrors the
relative size of the country population.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
57
Gilles KOLEDA, February 2003, LA VALEUR DE LA PROTECTION DES BREVETS
FRANÇAIS APPRECIEE PAR LEURS RENOUVELLEMENTS
http://alize.finances.gouv.fr/prevision/revue/resumes/ep168/pdf/rsf168a6.pdf
In this article, we compute the value of patent protection for patents applied at the French
Patent Office (INPI), using renewal patent data and values of renewal fees having to be paid to
maintained patents in vigour, on the 1951-2000 period. Simulations of patent protection value,
based on our econometric estimations for the 1951-1993 period, demonstrate that average
patent value have continuously and sharply increased during this period and that patent value
distribution function is strongly asymmetric. Interpreting this increase of the patent protection
average value as an evidence of the quality elevation of innovations protected by patents, we
explain an important fraction of the patents-to-R&D ratio decrease by a focus of R&D on more
valuable objectives.
Mark SCHANKERMAN and Ariel PAKES, 1986, ESTIMATES OF THE VALUE OF PATENT
RIGHTS IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES DURING THE POST-1950 PERIOD, The economic
journal, 96 (384), pp. 1052-1076, ISSN 1468-0297
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journals/ecoj
The principal objectives of this paper are to estimate and analyse the private value of patent
rights in the United Kingdom, France and Germany during the post-1950 period, and to
provide and consider some implications of an index of the `quality' (or average private value)
of patents. Since patent rights are seldom marketed, their private value is in general
unobserved. This paper makes inferences on the value of patent rights from the economic
responses of patentees. In most countries patentees must pay an annual renewal fee in order
to keep their patents in force. If it is assumed that agents make renewal decisions based on
the value of the patent right obtained by renewal, then data on patent renewals and renewal
fee schedules contain information on the distribution of the value of patent rights. In Section I
we outline a simple economic model of patent renewal decisions which, when combined with
the renewal data, allows us to estimate the distribution of the private value of patent protection.
Section II describes the data set and provides some simple nonparametric evidence on shifts
in the patent value distribution over time. In Section III we parameterise the model, and then
present and discuss the estimates. This includes some discussion of the empirical correlates
of intertemporal changes in the value distribution. Section IV derives estimates of the quantiles
of the distribution of the value of patent rights, and compares our results to information on both
the distribution of the value of patented ideas and on the resource cost of producing them.
Section V considers some implications of our results for the distinction between measures of
the quantity and the value of patents. The results indicate that the average value of patents
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
58
varies across countries. We also use the estimates to examine the relationship between the
decline in patenting activity since the late 1960s, the simultaneous fall in patents per unit of
inventive output.
14. Patent licensing
Mario BENASSI, Daniela CORSARO, Guido GEENEN, January 2010, ARE PATENT
BROKERS A POSSIBLE FIRST BEST?
http://ideas.repec.org/p/mil/wpdepa/2010-11.html
Licensing and reassignment of patents occur either directly or with the assistance of a patent
broker. Building forth on previous research on the topic, we investigate under which conditions
patent brokers can be a first best. First, we discuss structural reasons that can make patent
brokers a preferable option in extracting value from patents. Second, we argue that patent
brokers do have specific competences that make their presence necessary. By discussing
most relevant managerial theories, we formulate specific hypotheses to be tested empirically.
We also offer thoughts on a possible research design as to investigate patent brokers.
Ming-Chung CHANG, January 2010, INSIDER PATENT HOLDER LICENSING IN AN
OLIGOPOLY MARKET WITH DIFFERENT COST STRUCTURES: FIXED-FEE, ROYALTY,
AND AUCTION, Economics Bulletin, Vol. 30 no.1 pp. 20-31.
http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2010/Volume30/EB-10-V30-I1-P3.pdf
The issue of the optimal licensing contract in firms having different cost structures is studied
when the innovator is a producing patent holder who has three alternative licensing strategies,
namely, the fixed-fee, royalty rate, and auction strategies. We conclude that the auction
licensing strategy is not the best strategy when the innovator is a producing patent holder. This
finding differs from that of Kabiraj (2004) where the auction licensing method is the optimal
licensing strategy when the innovator is a non-producing patent holder. However, when we
only compare two of the licensing methods, namely, the fixed-fee licensing method and the
royalty licensing method, we conclude that if the inside innovator licenses to only some of the
firms, then the royalty licensing method will be the best strategy. This result is different from
that of Fosfuri and Roca (2004), who concluded that if only some of the licensees obtain a
licensing contract, then the fixed-fee licensing method will be the best choice for a producing
patent holder.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
59
Maria Isabella LEONE, Toke REICHSTEIN, Paolo BOCCARDELLI, Mats MAGNUSSON,
2010, FUEL ON THE INVENTION FUNNEL: TECHNOLOGY LICENSING-IN,
ANTECEDENTS AND INVENTION, Working Paper no. 10-13, ISBN: 978-87-7873-295-8
http://www3.druid.dk/wp/20100013.pdf
In this paper, we examine the impact of technology licensing-in on firm invention performance.
Studying a sample of 266 licensees and matched non-licensees using a two-part model
specification, we find that licensees are more likely to introduce inventions than their non-
licensee counterparts. This holds both if we consider invention in general, and invention in the
licensed technological class only. We also show that familiarity with the licensed technology
and technological specialization drives licensees to pursue a narrow invention strategy
primarily focusing on the technological class specified in the license agreement.
Annamaria CONTI, Patrick GAULÉ, January 2010, IS THE US OUTPERFORMING EUROPE
IN UNIVERSITY TECHNOLOGY LICENSING? A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON THE EUROPEAN
PARADOX, Working Paper no. 10-04, ISBN 978- 87-7873-286-6
http://www3.druid.dk/wp/20100004.pdf
Europe is perceived to be lagging behind the US in converting its academic results into
economic outcomes. Using new survey data on European and US Technology Transfer
Offices (TTOs), we find that differences in academic research, TTO staff and experience
explain to a great extent the gap between the US and Europe in terms of the number of
license agreements concluded. However, these factors account for only part of the difference
in license income. We relate the difference in licensing income to differences in the
organization and staffing of TTOs. Our analysis reveals that US TTOs do not attach more
importance to generating revenue as an objective than their European counterparts. However,
they employ more staff with experience in industry which explains some of the remaining
differential in license income performance.
Martin H. VARGAS, September 2009, LICENSING PROBABILISTIC PATENTS AND
LIABILITY RULES
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17593/
In this paper a dynamic game is used to compare licensing of a cost reduction innovations
under lost profits (LP) and unjust enrichment (UE), both damage rules used by courts in the
calculation of damages when a patent has been infringed.
The innovation, whose property right belongs to a firm (patent holder) has a positive probability
to be declared invalid in a court. The market is composed by two homogeneous firms that
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
60
compete in quantities (Cournot). Licensing by using royalty rates is preferred compared with
fixed fees, it is observable little licensing (just big innovations).
LP is better (almost all cases) than UE for the industry and society. However in the major of
the cases consumers are better off under UE and in the major of cases LP benefits more to
the patent holder.
Christoph GRIMPE, Katrin HUSSINGER, 2009, INVENTIONS UNDER SIEGE? THE IMPACT
OF TECHNOLOGY COMPETITION ON LICENSING, Discussion Paper No. 09-039
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1438019
In recent years, the view on patents as an instrument for firms to appropriate the returns from
inventive activities has shifted towards a more explicit consideration of a patent’s strategic
importance. In fact, firms have increasingly contributed to and been confronted with a patent
landscape characterized by numerous but marginal inventions, overlapping claims and
multiple patent ownerships for complementary technologies, as well as by patent fences of
substitute technologies owned by a single firm or a group of firms. Existing literature suggests
that both the fragmentation of ownership and the threat of a firm’s patent applications being
blocked by other patents lead to increased patenting and in-licensing activity in order to
mitigate potential hold-up by opportunistic patentees owning critical patents. In this paper, we
argue that firms facing a high chance of being blocked by technology competitors engage both
in in- and out-licensing of technology. This suggests that the blocking threat favors investment
in patent licenses rather than in pure in-house research and development (R&D) for some
firms while it increases licensing revenues of firms owning blocking patents. The relationship
should be particularly pronounced in complex technologies as these exhibit a higher density of
patent thickets compared to discrete technologies. We construct a novel measure that
captures the threat of being blocked if a firm files an average patent application conditional on
its technology portfolio. Based on a comprehensive dataset of more than 400 manufacturing
firms from Germany, our results largely confirm the research hypotheses. Distinguishing the
effect of the blocking threat for firms in discrete and complex industries (i.e., product
technologies characterized as complex contain a large number of patentable elements while
product technologies characterized as discrete consist of relatively few patentable elements),
we find that the likelihood of being blocked only affects the licensing activities of firms in
complex industries, while there is no effect of blocking on licensing for firms operating in
discrete industries. This result is in line with the argument that licensing can mitigate hold-up
problems in technology markets. In addition, we take account of the potential feedback effects
of licensing on internal R&D investments of the firm and find that these are endogenous.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
61
Maria PLUVIA ZUNIGA, Dominique GUELLEC, March 2009, WHO LICENSES OUT
PATENTS AND WHY? LESSONS FROM A BUSINESS SURVEY, OECD Science,
Technology and Industry Working Papers, 2009/5, OECD publishing, © OECD
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/47/16/42477187.pdf
The increasing importance of licensing for innovation is supported by ample anecdotal
evidence. However, statistics on this topic are scarce. The OECD, together with the European
Patent Office and the University of Tokyo, carried out a business survey on the licensing-out of
patents. The goal was to investigate the intensity of licensing to affiliated and non-affiliated
companies, its evolution, the characteristics, motivations and obstacles met by companies
doing or willing to license. The target population was patent holders: 600 European firms and 1
600 Japanese firms responded to the survey, in the second half of 2007. The results show that
patent licensing is widespread among patenting firms: around one company in five in Europe
licenses patents to non-affiliated partners, whereas more than one in four does so in Japan.
The relationship between size of the firm and probability to license out is U-shaped: small firms
and large firms are more likely to license out their patented inventions. In Europe, SMEs have
more difficulties to license out their patents than large firms. The major barrier to licensing out
patent markets is informational (identifying partners). Finally, we also find that more than one
third of young European firms (born after 2000) deem patents as quite or very important to
convince private investors and venture capitalists to provide them with funds.
Iain M. COCKBURN, Megan J. MACGARVIE and Elisabeth MÜLLER, November 2008,
PATENT THICKETS, LICENSING AND INNOVATIVE PERFORMANCE
http://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/zewdip/7475.html
We examine the relationship between fragmented intellectual property (IP) rights and
innovative performance, taking into consideration the role played by in-licensing of IP.
Controlling for a variety of firm and market characteristics, we find that firms facing more
fragmented IP landscapes are more likely to report expenditures on in-licensing and for those
firms that do incur license costs we find a weak positive association between licensing
expenditure and fragmented IP rights in the relevant technology. We also observe a negative
relationship between IP fragmentation and innovative performance, but only for firms that
engage in in-licensing and only for product innovation. The relationship between fragmentation
and innovative performance also depends on the size of a firm’s patent portfolio, which
suggests an important strategic role for defensive patenting in the context of fragmented
property rights.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
62
Joel SANDONÍS, Ramón FAULÍ-OLLER, April 2007, PATENT LICENSING BY MEANS OF AN
AUCTION: INTERNAL VS. EXTERNAL PATENTEE
http://www.ivie.es/downloads/docs/wpasad/wpasad-2007-09.pdf
An independent research laboratory owns a patented process innovation that can be licensed
by means of an auction to two Cournot duopolists producing differentiated goods. For large
innovations and close enough substitute goods the patentee auctions of only one license,
preventing the full diffusion of the innovation. For this range of parameters, however, if the
laboratory merged with one of the firms in the industry, full technology diffusion would be
implemented as the merged entity would always license the innovation to the rival firm. This
explains that, in this context, a vertical merger is both profitable and welfare improving.
Maria Isabella LEONE, Raffaele ORIANI, 2007, THE OPTION VALUE OF PATENT
LICENSES
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/e222spring07_files/LEONE_ORIANI_TheOptionValueOfPaten
tLicenses.pdf
Patent valuation is one of the most relevant issues within the studies on the management of
intellectual property rights. As firms rely more and more on external sources of innovation, the
need for reliable measurements of what is traded becomes essential. Patent valuation is
especially challenging primary because of the great uncertainty affecting their returns and for
the lack of market-based data. The most recent and promising attempts in this research field
have been developed within the real option theory (ROT), which recognizes the effect of
uncertainty on patent value, and they have taken advantage of the increasing amount of
information available about licenses. The aim of this paper is to propose and empirically test a
valuation model of licensed patents based on ROT. According to our model, the initial fee paid
by the licensee is considered analogous to the premium she is willing to pay to buy an option
to commercialize the licensed patents in the future. A fundamental prediction of ROT is that
this option value increases with volatility. In order analyze the relationship between volatility
and the initial fee of the license, we assume that volatility is primarily determined by market
and technological uncertainty. We analyse 105 patent licenses. The results of our regression
model show that both market and technological uncertainty positively affect the initial fee paid
for a patent license.
15. Patents and gender
Ejermo, Olof & Jung, Taehyun (2012), DEMOGRAPHIC PATTERNS AND TRENDS IN
PATENTING: GENDER, AGE, AND EDUCATION OF INVENTORS
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
63
http://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/lucirc/2012_005.html
This paper uses register-linked patent records covering an extended period 1985-2007 to
analyze detailed demographic profiles of inventors. The analysis covers about 80 percent of all
inventors with Swedish addresses listed on European Patent Office records. Examining
temporal trends of gender, age, and education shows that the body of inventors is becoming
more balanced in gender, younger, and more educated. However, the rate at which female
inventors are entering into patenting has slowed down since the early 2000’s compared to the
mid-1990s. Moreover, comparing the inventor sample with the entire population of Sweden
reveals that 1) the closing of the gender gap in inventing is not taking place at the same rate
as among Ph.D. holders and that 2) the dependence of inventing on the highly educated
(especially, Ph.D. holders) is being intensified over time, but the number of highly educated is
growing faster among the general population than among inventors. Finally, the analysis
shows that there is significant heterogeneity in the composition and tendency of gender, age,
and education of inventors across technology fields.
Yu MENG, January 2010, WOMEN IN PATENTING: DOES NANOTECHNOLOGY MAKE A
DIFFERENCE?
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewabstract.php?id=500602&cf=44
The lower level of women’s scientific productivity relative to men’s has been well documented
as a consistent pattern over time and across disciplines (Astin 1969; Cole and Cole 1973; Cole
and Zuckerman 1984; Fox and Faver 1985; Long 1987; Zuckerman 1987; Long 1992;
Creamer 1998; Levin and Stephan 1998; Long 2001; Zuckerman 2001; Fox 2005). Given the
close association between productivity and rewards in science, the fact that women scientists
are less productive has a significant and negative impact on their career advancement by
creating and perpetuating gender inequality in other important dimensions beyond productivity,
such as promotion and salary (Fox 1999; Fox 2001; Fox and Stephan 2001). The resulted
pervasive gender inequality in science has been detrimental to social values and economic
development by reinforcing negative stereotypes and discouraging talented people to
participate in and contribute to science and technology (S&T).
However, the traditional research on gender difference in scientific productive focused more
on academic scientists and their publication productivity. This volume of research cannot show
us the full picture of women’s status with regard to productivity in the contemporary S&T
community any more because some dramatic exchanges have occurred in the S&T context
and impose potential influence on women scientists’ performance relative to their male
counterpart’s, among which the emergence of commercial sciences, the quick rise of
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
64
interdisciplinary sciences, and the influx of women in S&T employment sectors outside of
academia are the most relevant. Although scholars are making efforts to address the effects of
these contextual changes on the theme, including those investigating women’s involvement in
commercial activities relative to men’s (Thursby and Thursby 2005; Whittington and Smith-
Doerr 2005; Ding, Murray et al. 2006; Murray and Graham 2007; Stephan and El-Ganainy
2007), those assessing women’s performance in industry (Evetts 1996; Reskin and McBrier
2000; Padavic and Reskin 2002; Smith-Doerr 2005; Whittington 2007; Bunker Whittington
2009), and those discussing more likelihood of women’s participation in interdisciplinary
sciences (Rhoten and Parker 2004; Carayol and Thuc Uyen Nguyen 2005; Corley and
Gaughan 2005; Rhoten and Pfirman 2007), they only capture one or two aspects of the total
changing trend, still leaving the complete knowledge need unmet.
This study develops a comprehensive framework that integrates above highlighted contextual
changes to assess the effects of nanotechnology (as an example of interdisciplinary sciences)
on gender differences in commercial output (patents here) across all S&T employment
sectors. Using a unique nano-related patent database developed by Porter and his colleague
(Porter, Youtie et al. 2008) and adopting a methodology of identifying inventors' sex from their
first names (Naldi et al. 2002, 2004; Frietsch et al. 2009), the study will provide empirical
information to answer whether nanotechnology has some effect on narrowing the gender gap
in patenting. As my preliminary result shows that the gender gap in patent outputs is smaller in
nanotechnology, The study is expected not only to fill the gap between current literature and
the need for updated knowledge, but also to provide justification on the huge investment in
interdisciplinary sciences from social equality perspective and to suggest effective means of
attracting women in S&T.
Ulrike BUSOLT, Kordula KUGELE, Iris TINSEL, 2008, EUROPEAN STUDIES ON GENDER
ASPECTS OF INVENTIONS - STATISTICAL SURVEY AND ANALYSIS OF GENDER
IMPACT ON INVENTIONS (ESGI)
http://www.esgi.de/uploads/media/080901_IAF_Forschungsbericht_2008.pdf
Ulrike BUSOLT, Kordula KUGELE, Svenja PALTZ, ESGI (European Study on Gender Aspects
of Inventions) project: WHAT IS THE CURRENT STATE OF THE FEMALE CONTRIBUTION
OF EUROPEAN INVENTORS TO PATENT APPLICATIONS FILED AT THE EUROPEAN
PATENT OFFICE?
http://www.esgi.de/uploads/media/071112_WorkReport1.pdf
This report is part of the ESGI project which started in October 2006 and runs till September
2008. The project is financed by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
65
Programme and located at Hochschule Furtwangen University in Germany. Within this
Specific Support Action the gender impact on inventive activities within the time-span 2001 –
2003 will be investigated.
The ESGI inventor and patent database consists of 157 645 patent applications to the
European Patent Office with priority year 2001, 2002 and 2003. The sample includes the data
of 388 844 inventors of which 360 844 or 93% have a residence address in one of the
European Union Member States.
German inventors clearly dominate the European patenting activities. 46.9% of all inventors
have a German residence address. Inventors from France count up for 13.6% followed by
Great Britain with 10.2% and Italy as well as the Netherlands with 7.0% each.
On the basis of an existing first name database, containing names from six countries, the
project developed the extended first name database “FNDB ESGI”. It includes a total of 11 301
names from 27 European countries. ESGI proved to be an efficient tool for the gender
assignment of inventor’s names in the inventor and patent database.
93% of all inventors with a residence address in the EU-27 were classified as male or female.
The success rate for the 27 different EU Member States ranges from 100% to 81%.
Out of all European inventors 8.3% are women and 91.7% are men, meaning that out of 10
inventors approximately one is a woman. Pronounced differences between the different
countries are found for this indicator. The female proportions ranges from 23.1% for the best
achieving country Lithuania to 4.8% for the least achieving country Austria. It stands out that
the highest proportions of female inventors are found in the Eastern European Union Member
States which in contrast are low in absolute numbers of patent applications. Germany, the
leading country in patenting activities in general, reaches a female share of 6.1% only. Thus,
this striking disproportion particularly lowers the European average.
The indicator contribution (patent-equivalents) generally is lower than the female share of
inventors and sums up to 6.3% for the EU-27 average. These comparatively lower shares
indicate that women invent in larger groups than men do.
All patent applications were allocated to eight sections and 31 technical units.
Concluding these findings the dominance of women in section A “Human necessities” and C
“Chemistry/Metallurgy” is pronounced. Female researchers invent most often in pharmacy
(22.7%) and biotechnology related technologies (22.2%) where approximately one out of four
patents is filed by a woman. High rates are also found in chemistry related areas while the
female activities are low in the mechanical, construction, physics and electrical sections.
The business enterprise sector clearly dominates the patenting activities in the European
Union since 87.8% of all patents are applied for by inventors from the business enterprise
sector. The other sectors reach shares of 3.9% (individuals), 2.0% (higher education), 1.8%
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
66
(government), 1.9% (private non-public) and 0.1% (hospital). A total of 2.5% inventors could
not be allocated to a sector.
In the business enterprise sector the female proportion counts up to 7.9%, meaning that out of
100 patents only 12 were applied by women, whereas 88 were applied by men.
Compared to the general distribution, women generally apply for patents in those technological
areas where larger groups are present.
HALLER, M. VROHLINGS, R. FRIETSCH, H. GRUPP, Studien zum deutschen
Innovationssystem, Nr. 18-2007, Studie im Rahmen der Berichterstattung zur
Technologischen Leistungsfähigkeit Deutschlands, ANALYSE DES TECHNISCHEN UND
WISSENSCHAFTLICHEN BEITRAGS VON FRAUEN
http://www.bmbf.de/pubRD/sdi-18-07_.pdf
The aim of this study is to measure and to describe the technical and scientific contribution of
women. Patent applications and publications have been analysed. The study used data from
14 countries France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Austria, Australia,
Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. Three indicators
are used to show the patent activities and the publication from women in an empiric form:
participation as inventor/author, citation as inventor/author and contribution as inventor/author.
Waverly W. DING, Pierre AZOULAY and Toby E. STUART, Journal of Economic Behavior and
Organization, 2007, vol. 63, p. 599-623, THE DETERMINANTS OF FACULTY PATENTING
BEHAVIOR: DEMOGRAPHICS OR OPPORTUNITIES?
http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/papers/ding7_determinants%20of%20faculty%20patenti
ng.pdf
We examine the individual, contextual, and institutional determinants of faculty patenting
behavior in a panel dataset of 3,862 academic life scientists. Using discrete time hazard rate
models and fixed effects logistic models, we find that patenting events are preceded by a flurry
of publications, even holding constant time-invariant scientific talent and the latent patentability
of a scientist’s research. Whereas previous research emphasized that academic patenters are
more accomplished on average than their non-patenting counterparts, our findings suggest
that patenting behavior is also a function of scientific opportunities. This result has important
implications for the public policy debate surrounding academic patenting.
Waverly W. DING, Fiona MURRAY, and Toby E. STUART, 2006, GENDER DIFFERENCES
IN PATENTING IN THE ACADEMIC LIFE SCIENCES
http://haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/papers/ding9_gender%20differences%20in%20patenting.pdf
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
67
We analyze longitudinal data on academic careers and conduct interviews with faculty
members to determine the scope and causes of the gender gap in patenting among life
scientists. Our regressions on a random sample of 4,227 life scientists over a 30-year period
show that women faculty members patent at about 40 percent of the rate of men. We find that
the gender gap has been improving over time, although it remains large.
Angela HULLMANN, October 2001, BIBLIOMETRIC AND PATENT INDICATORS BY
GENDER: IS IT FEASIBLE?
ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/indicators/docs/ind_wp_ah1.pdf
Both publication and patent indicators are used as proxy to measure the scientific and
technological productivity of a country. An application for a patent indicates that there has
been a production of new knowledge linked to an invention, and, more importantly, that this
knowledge might have potential economic returns. The bibliometric indicator that measures
the number of publications gives an indication of the research capacity of a country or of a
specific research community within the country as well as the changes in scientific productivity
over time.
Given the importance attached to patent indicators as an output indicator, it might be
worthwhile to investigate the gender issue. Are women more or less productive in the area of
science and technology, are they associated with patents of higher economic value, in which
technology fields do they tend to be present? Similar important questions can be asked about
the publication indicator: do women publish more than men, in which disciplines and
technology fields are they most active, do they publish higher quality papers?
Despite the importance of these questions – also with a view on the utilisation of a country’s
human resources – little information is systematically recorded on the gender of inventors and
authors. In order to support the development of a methodology that enables registering gender
aspects, the European Commission decided to commission two feasibility studies. Both
studies were carried out by Biosoft in Milano, Italy.
This paper relies on extracts from the final reports of the two studies. This paper will describe,
first, the methodological design of the so-called First Name Data Base (FNDB) which was
developed in these feasibility studies to determine the gender of the inventor or author.
Secondly, this paper will present the results emerging from the use of the FNDB methodology
to generate patent and bibliometric data by gender for six EU countries, nine disciplines and
31 technology fields. Finally, the paper will assess the feasibility of the FNDB methodology
and finish with an outlook if and how this methodology could be extended to all fifteen EU
Member States.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
68
16. Patents and name harmonisation
Grid THOMA, Salvatore TORRISI, Alfonso GAMBARDELLA, Dominique GUELLEC, Bronwyn
H. HALL, Dietmar HARHOFF, Draft version 3 June 2009, METHODS AND SOFTWARE FOR
THE HARMONIZATION AND COMBINATION OF DATASETS: A test based on IP-related
data and accounting databases with a large panel of companies at the worldwide level
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.esf-ape-
inv.eu%2Fdoc%2Fupload%2FTTGGHH_200920091117120005.pdf
The lack of firm-level data on innovative activities has always constrained the development of
empirical studies on innovation. More recently, the availability of large datasets on indicators
such as R&D expenditures and patents has relaxed these constraints and spurred the growth
of a new wave of research. However, measuring innovation still remains a difficult task for
reasons linked to the quality of available indicators and the difficulty of integrating innovation
indicators to other firm-level data.
Data on R&D expenditures have traditionally been used as a proxy for innovation effort or
value, but because they measure input they are unable to tell us much about the ‘success' of
innovative activities, nor do they give much detail about their direction. Moreover, especially in
the case of European firms, data on R&D expenditures are often missing because reporting
these expenditures is not required by accounting and fiscal regulations in a number of
countries. Therefore, an increasing number of studies have used patents counts as a measure
of inventive output. However, crude patent counts are an extremely noisy indicator of inventive
output because they do not account for differences in the value of patented inventions. For this
reason, many innovation scholars have introduced various patent-related indicators as a
measure of the importance or ‘quality' of the inventive output.
Eric J. IVERSEN, Iiro MÄKINEN, Hans LÖÖF, Dong-hyun OH, Svend T. JESPERSEN, Martin
JUNGE and Jonas BECH, April 2009, SMALL NORDIC ENTERPRISES - DEVELOPING IPR
IN GLOBAL COMPETITION
http://scripts.abe.kth.se/cesis/documents/WP178.pdf
This paper presents the results of a pan-Nordic study to explore how small and medium-size
enterprises use IPR. It is a pilot study that demonstrates a commonly developed approach
designed to overcome the barriers that hinder study of IPR use by small firms. The pilot study
focuses particularly on patenting, based on the common approach linking national business
registries with patent applicants. This is the first cross-country project of its kind to develop and
execute such an exercise. It applies available definitions and approaches to improve
comparability in the Nordic area and with other efforts (such as the OECD patent name
harmonization activity). The intention is to demonstrate how this cross-country approach can
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
69
address the needs of policymakers in the Nordic countries for reliable and comparative
information about IPR use among the smallest firms.
Grid THOMA, Salvatore TORRISI, 2007, CREATING POWERFUL INDICATORS FOR
INNOVATION STUDIES WITH APPROXIMATE MATCHING ALGORITHMS. A TEST BASED
ON PATSTAT AND AMADEUS DATABASES
ftp://ftp.unibocconi.it/pub/RePEc/cri/papers/WP211ThomaTorrisi.pdf
The lack of firm-level data on innovative activities has always constrained the development of
empirical studies on innovation. More recently, the availability of large datasets on indicators,
such as R&D expenditures and patents, has relaxed these constrains and spurred the growth
of a new wave of research. However, measuring innovation still remains a difficult task for
reasons linked to the quality of available indicators and the difficulty of integrating innovation
indicators to other firm-level data. As regards quality, data on R&D expenditures represent a
measure of input but do not tell much about the ‘success’ of innovative activities. Moreover,
especially in the case of European firms, data on R&D expenditures are often missing
because reporting these expenditures is not required by accounting and fiscal regulations in
some countries.
An increasing number of studies have used patents counts as a measure of inventive output.
However, crude patent counts are a biased indicator of inventive output because they do not
account for differences in the value of patented inventions. This is the reason why innovation
scholars have introduced various patent-related indicators as a measure of the ‘quality’ of the
inventive output.
Integrating these measures of inventive activity with other firm-level information, such as
accounting and financial data, is another challenging task. A major problem in this field is
represented by the difficulty of harmonizing information from different data sources. This is a
relevant issue since inaccuracy in data merging and integration leads to measurement errors
and biased results.
An important source of measurement error arises from inaccuracies in matching data on
innovators across different datasets. This study reports on a test of company names
standardization and matching. Our test is based on two data sources: the PATSTAT patent
database and the Amadeus accounting and financial dataset. Earlier studies have mostly
relied on manual, ad-hoc methods. More recently scholars have started experimenting with
automatic matching techniques. This paper contributes to this body of research by comparing
two different approaches – the character-to-character match of standardized company names
(perfect matching) and the approximate matching based on string similarity functions. Our
results show that approximate matching yields substantial gains over perfect matching, in
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
70
terms of frequency of positive matches, with a limited loss of precision – i.e., low rates of false
matches and false negatives.
Tom MAGERMAN, Bart VAN LOOY, Xiaoyan SONG, November 2006, DATA PRODUCTION
METHODS FOR HARMONIZED PATENT STATISTICS: PATENTEE NAME
HARMONIZATION, KUL Working Paper No. MSI 0605
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID944470_code444941.pdf?abstractid=94447
0
Patent documents are one of the most comprehensive data sources on technology
development. As such, they provide a unique source of information to analyze and monitor
technological performance. Patent indicators are now used by companies and by policy and
government agencies alike to assess technological progress on the level of regions, countries,
domains, and even specific entities such as companies, universities and individual inventors.
In this paper, we develop a comprehensive method to achieve harmonization of patentee
names in an automated way so that analysis at the level of patentees can be facilitated. The
method has been applied to an extensive set of all patentee names found for all EPO patent
applications published between 1978 and 2004 and all granted USPTO patents published
between 1991 and 2003. As completeness (the extent to which the name-harmonization
procedure is able to capture all name variants of the same patentee) and accuracy (the extent
to which the name-harmonization procedure correctly allocates name variants to a single,
harmonized patentee name) do not go hand in hand, priority has been given to accuracy.
Before discussing in detail the methodology and its effects as applied to the EPO and USPTO
patentee name list, we will first clarify the difference between patentee name harmonization
and legal entity identification. In addition, we will briefly expand on the methods and
approaches previously developed to address the issue of patentee name harmonization, in
order to shed light on our specific contribution. Finally, future refinements and extensions are
discussed.
17. Foreign applications/co-patents/cooperation
Valentina DE MARCHI, January 2010, COOPERATION TOWARD GREEN INNOVATION: AN
EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewabstract.php?id=500638&cf=44
This paper explores the relationship between firms' cooperation on innovation and green
innovation propensity.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
71
As consumers awareness on environmental problem is on the rise and policies are
increasingly directed to push eco-friendly productions, the attention of firms to reduce their
impact on the environment is becoming mainstream in many industries. The way companies
integrate environmental concerns into their strategies, while consolidating their competitive
advantage, is through green innovations.
Previous literature has demonstrated the peculiarity of green innovation with respect to other
innovations as regards its drivers (Horbach, 2008), its positive spill-overs (Rennings, 2000),
the importance of regulation to trigger it (Porter and van der Linde, 1995).
I add to this stream of literature that such innovations differ from other innovations also
because they are more likely the result of a cooperative effort with partners of their network.
Green innovations are in fact inherently systemic (Foxon and Andersen, 2009, Senge,
Carstedt, and Porter, 2001) for technological, organizational or marketing issues. As far as the
different production process stages are split among different firms, due to the fragmentation of
production, firms need to coordinate the innovative effort with such parters. Furthermore,
needing complementary assets and capabilities (Teece, 1986) that are external to the firm or
need to be created ad hoc, green innovators engage in cooperative agreements with industrial
partners and knowledge providers to complement internal resources (Hemmelskamp, 1999,
Love and Roper, 2009).
Despite the importance of understanding eco-friendly innovation propensity and the
antecedents of its successfully implementation and diffusion for policy and firm strategies
development, there is still little empirical evidence: studies that systematically analyzed such
topic are scarce and mainly qualitative or empirically bounded (Geffen and Rothenberg, 2000,
Mazzanti and Zoboli, 2005). The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap, by analyzing the
impact of network innovative activities on green innovative propensity.
The contribution of this paper is intended to be two-fold: theoretical, by providing a framework
that build on network and innovation economics literature to analyze determinants of green
innovation, as briefly described above; and empirically, by testing these hypothesis at the
microeconomic level.
I use the 2007 Community Innovation Survey for Spanish firms (PITEC) data in order to
investigate the relations between the number of interorganizational cooperative agreements
and the type of partners on green innovative performance of firms. The dataset, made by 6196
manufacturing firms, contains information on firm structural characteristics, R&D and
innovation cooperation attitudes and characteristic of the innovations. To test the hypothesis a
logit model on innovative firms controlling for possible selection bias is used. The results
confirm the hypothesis that green innovative firms rely on external knowledge and cooperate
on innovation to an higher extend than other innovative firms, engaging in an higher number of
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
72
cooperative agreements. Furthermore, the role of suppliers and of kibs and universities seems
to be more relevant than for other innovations, whereas clients doesn't seems to affect green
innovation to a different degree than other innovations.
Federico CAVIGGIOLI, January 2010, INTERNATIONAL PATENT EXTENSIONS: FOREIGN
APPLICATIONS AT THE JAPAN PATENT OFFICE
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewabstract.php?id=500700&cf=44
This article aims to evaluate some of the possible factors which could have had a significant
role in the increase in the yearly number of foreign patent applications at the Japan Patent
Office. Starting from the 90’s, foreign applications increased constantly while the number of
domestic filings remained almost the same or even decreased. The increase is more striking
when compared to analogue figures for the US Patent and Trademark Office and the
European Patent Office, where the same ratio didn’t change too much in the same period.
The existing literature has recognized, not always unanimously, some factors affecting the
propensity to file a patent application in a foreign country. A group of them is related to the
innovativeness of the extending countries (Eaton and Kortum, 1996; Grupp and Schmoch,
1999; Furman et al., 2002; van Zeebroeck et al., 2009) while other authors have focused on
the characteristics of the recipient country (Bosworth, 1984; Maskus, 1998; O’Keefe, 2005).
This paper tries to capture the relevance of such drivers in the increased amount of foreign
patent applications at the JPO.
The innovativeness of the extending countries is measured through their wealth, size and
research commitment, respectively proxied by GDP per capita, population and R&D
expenditures. The attractiveness of the recipient country is similarly indexed by analysing its
wealth, market size and the peculiarities of the national patent office in charge to process
international patent applications. With these considerations, Japan is valuated by its GDP per
capita, population, patent fee and the level of the harmonization of Japan patent system
compared to each extending country, by evaluating the Ginarte and Park patent protection
index (1997 and 2008).
The dependent variable is the number of patent application filed at the JPO by each country
per every year from 1991 to 2005. The data have been collected from the JPO Annual
Reports. Since it can assume only positive integer values and it is affected by overdispersion I
decided to use a negative binomial model for panel data. In order to take in consideration
possible missed differences among countries, I opted for a fixed effects regression. To control
for the involvement of each extending country in Japan economy, I considered the level of FDI
and of trade to Japan from each originating nation and the proximity in terms of filed patents at
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
73
the USPTO and the EPO. In the same way I tried to keep trace of the national propensity to
patent in general
Regression results show a positive influence of some of the characteristics of the extending
countries, in particular: population and commitment to R&D and of the level of harmonization
between Japan’s and each extending country’s patent system; entry fee, Japan’s population
and GDP per capita, trade and FDI are much less relevant.
18. Patent citations
Czarnitzki, Dirk & Hussinger, Katrin & Leten, Bart (2011), THE MARKET VALUE OF
BLOCKING PATENT CITATIONS
http://ideas.repec.org/cgi-bin/htsearch?np=1&q=patent+citation
There is a growing literature that aims at assessing the private value of knowledge assets and
patents. It has been shown that patents and their quality as measured by citations received by
future patents contribute significantly to the market value of firms beyond their R&D stocks.
This paper goes one step further and distinguishes between different types of forward citations
patents can receive at the European Patent Office. While a patent can be cited as non-
infringing state of the art, it can also be cited because it threatens the novelty of patent
applications ('blocking citations'). Empirical results from a market value model for a sample of
large, R&D-intensive U.S., European and Japanese firms show that patents frequently cited as
blocking references have a higher economic value for their owners than patents cited for
nonblocking reasons. This finding adds to the patent value literature by showing that different
types of patent citations carry different information on the economic value of patents. The
result further suggests that the total number of forward citations can be an imprecise measure
of patent value.
Joaquín M. AZAGRA-CAROA, Pauline MATTSSON, François PERRUCHAS, 2010,
SMOOTHING THE LIES: DO PATENT EXAMINERS TAKE NOTICE IF APPLICANTS
INCLUDE CITATIONS?
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdigital.csic.es%2Fbitstream%2F10261%
2F26646%2F1%2FSmoothing%2520the%2520lies_%2520Do%2520patent%2520examiners
%2520take%2520notice%2520if%2520applicants%2520include%2520citations_%255B1%25
5D.pdf
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
74
Examiner patent citations are a popular source of indicators of technological impact and
knowledge flows, despite various critiques. We analyse the distribution of examiner patent
citations according to patent characteristics, to show their comparative meaningless. Our
findings show that it is the science-base of the technology that determines the inclusion of
applicant citations. However, this gets masked by the citations added by patent examiners,
who smooth the distribution of citations across technology classes and include the ‘standard’
knowledge bases regardless of which references applicants cite. Some researchers have
called for the use of applicant rather than examiner patent citations to build indicators of
technology impact and knowledge flows. However, we show that the former are not
necessarily ‘better’ than the latter, because applicants may ‘inflate’ the numbers in
international patents especially when there are co-applicants. The implications are that
analysts should consider alternative uses of patent citations e.g. to build indicators of trust
within a research system.
Georg VON GRAEVENITZ, Stefan WAGNER, Dietmar HARHOFF, July 2009, HOW TO
MEASURE PATENT THICKETS - A NOVEL APPROACH, Discussion paper 2009-9
http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/
The existing literature identifies patent thickets indirectly. In this paper we propose a novel
measure based on patent citations which allows us to measure the density of patent thickets
directly. We discuss the algorithm which generates the measure and present descriptive
results validating it. Moreover, we identify technology areas which are particularly impacted by
patent thickets.
Emanuele BACCHIOCCHIY, Fabio MONTOBBIO, February 2009, INTERNATIONAL
KNOWLEDGE DIFFUSION AND HOME-BIAS EFFECT. DO USPTO & EPO PATENT
CITATIONS TELL THE SAME STORY?
http://portale.unibocconi.it/wps/wcm/connect/resources/file/eb50cd098ee9388/WP15_Bacchio
cchiMontobbio.pdf
This paper estimates the international diffusion and obsolescence of technological knowledge
by technological field and country using patent citations from the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office (USPTO) and from the European Patent Office (EPO). We control for self-citations and
for procedural and legal differences between patent offices in the citation procedures using
equivalent patents. We show that (1) both at the EPO and USPTO domestic citations come
sooner and there is a strong localization effect of patent citations at national level; (2) the US
technological system is becoming less central in the international web of knowledge flows; (3)
some differences across patent offices emerge in the ranking by technological fields in the
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
75
speed of diffusion and decay of technological knowledge. We support the conjecture that not
only technological opportunities but also absorptive capacity plays a role. Finally on the
methodological side we show that at the USPTO the median citation lag is twice as large
relatively to the citations at the EPO, that some bias is induced by the different institutional
practices at the EPO and USPTO and that using patent families generates a selection bias
towards high quality patents.
Fabio MONTOBBIOA and Valerio STERZI, November 2008, INVENTING TOGETHER:
EXPLORING THE NATURE OF INTERNATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVERS IN LATIN
AMERICA
http://eco.uninsubria.it/webdocenti/fmontobbio/papers/Montobbio_Sterzi2011.pdf
This paper studies the nature, sources and determinants of international patenting activity in
Latin American countries (LACs) and examines the extent to which LACs benefit from R&D
that is performed in the G-5 countries (France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, and United
States). By using patents and patent citations at the United States Patent and Trademark
Office we trace intrasectoral knowledge flows from G-5 countries to LACs. We study the
impact of three channels of spillovers: pure spillovers, patent citations related spillovers, and
face-to-face contact spillovers. Our results, based on data for Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, and Mexico, suggest that international knowledge spillovers from the G-5 countries
are a significant determinant of inventive activity over the period 1988-2003. In particular we
find that the stock of ideas produced in the US has a strong impact on the international
patenting activity of these countries. Moreover controlling for US-driven pure spillover effects,
bilateral patent citations and face-to-face relationships between inventors are both important
additional mechanisms of knowledge transmission. Some of our results suggest that the latter
mechanism is more important than the former.
Juan ALCÁCER, Michelle GITTELMAN, Bhaven SAMPAT, July 2008, APPLICANT AND
EXAMINER CITATIONS IN US PATENTS: AN OVERVIEW AND ANALYSIS
http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-016.pdf
Researchers studying innovation increasingly use indicators based on patent citations.
However, it is well known that not all citations originate from applicants— patent examiners
contribute to citations listed in issued patents—and that this could complicate interpretation of
findings in this literature. In 2001 the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) began
reporting examiner and applicant citations separately. In this paper, we analyze the prior art
citations of all patents granted by the USPTO in 2001–2003. We show that examiner citations
account for 63 per cent of all citations on the average patent, and that 40 per cent of patents
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
76
have all citations added by examiners. We use multivariate regression and analysis of
variance to identify the determinants of examiner shares. Examiner shares are highest for non-
US applicants and in electronics, communications, and computer-related fields. However,
most of the variation is explained by firm-specific variables, with the largest patent applicants
having high examiner shares. Moreover, a large number of firms are granted patents that
contain no applicant prior art. Taken together, our findings suggest that heterogeneity in firm-
level patenting practices, in particular by high-volume applicants, has a strong influence on the
data. This suggests that analysis of firm-level differences in patenting strategies is an
important topic for future research.
Tom MAGERMAN, Bart VAN LOOY, Xiaoyan SONG, July 2008, EXPLORING THE
FEASIBILITY AND ACCURACY OF LATENT SEMANTIC ANALYSIS BASED TEXT MINING
TECHNIQUES TO DETECT SIMILARITY BETWEEN PATENT DOCUMENTS AND
SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1191744
In this study, we examine and validate the use of existing text mining techniques (based on the
vector space model and latent semantic indexing) to detect similarities between patent
documents and scientific publications. Clearly, experts involved in domain studies would
benefit from techniques that allow similarity to be detected - and hence facilitate mapping,
categorization and classification efforts. In addition, given current debates on the relevance
and appropriateness of academic patenting, the ability to assess content-relatedness between
sets of documents - in this case, patents and publications - might become relevant and useful.
We list several options available to arrive at content based similarity measures. Different
options of a vector space model and latent semantic indexing approach have been selected
and applied to the publications and patents of a sample of academic inventors (n=6). We also
validated the outcomes by using independently obtained validation scores of human raters.
While we conclude that mixed mining techniques can be valuable for detecting similarities
between patents and publications, our findings also indicate that the various options available
to arrive at similarity measures vary considerably in terms of accuracy: some generally
accepted text mining options, like dimensionality reduction and LSA, do not yield the best
results when working with smaller document sets. Implications and directions for further
research are discussed.
Joint Committee on Quantitative Assessment of Research, June 2008, CITATION
STATISTICS, A report from the International Mathematical Union (IMU) in cooperation with the
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
77
International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) and the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (IMS).
http://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Report/CitationStatistics.pdf
This is a report about the use and misuse of citation data in the assessment of scientific
research. The idea that research assessment must be done using "simple and objective"
methods is increasingly prevalent today. The "simple and objective" methods are broadly
interpreted as bibliometrics, that is, citation data and the statistics derived from them. There is
a belief that citation statistics are inherently more accurate because they substitute simple
numbers for complex judgments, and hence overcome the possible subjectivity of peer review.
But this belief is unfounded.
Aditi MEHTA, Marc RYSMAN, Tim SIMCOE, May 2008, IDENTIFYING THE AGE PROFILE
OF PATENT CITATIONS: NEW ESTIMATES OF KNOWLEDGE DIFFUSION
http://people.bu.edu/mrysman/research/ageProfile.pdf
Knowledge diffusion is a central issue in the study of innovation, agglomeration and growth,
but is notoriously difficult to measure. Many papers have addressed this problem by using
patent citations as an observable proxy for knowledge flows. These studies typically rely on
functional form assumptions to identify the citation age distribution, given the collinearity
between application-year, citation-year, and patent-age. We show empirically that a patent's
\citation clock" does not start until it issues, and propose a highly flexible identification strategy
that uses the lag between application and grant as a source of exogenous variation. We
examine the potential bias if our identification assumption is incorrect, and discuss potential
extensions into other research areas. Finally, we use our method to re-examine prior results
on the citation age-profile of patents from different technological fields and application-year
cohorts.
Rekha RAO, May 2008, A REPORT ON GEOGRAPHICAL COVERAGE OF IPR RESEARCH,
WP 70
http://www.dime-eu.org/wp14
In this report we endeavour to undertake a survey of literature on IPR (Intellectual property
rights) and look at the geographical coverage of the research being undertaken in this field.
This survey gives us an idea of who is working on what and where the researchers are
located. There are 4 important themes in IPR and we observe a broad geographical coverage
among these 4 themes. We shall classify the publications that we had obtained from the above
literature review into following 4 themes, the motivations to patent and the use of patents (T1),
the measurement of patent value and the determinants of high quality patents (T2), the
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
78
innovation process: the role of organisational competencies, research collaborations and
agglomeration economies (T3) and Inventors and inventors’ productivity (T4).
Roberto FONTANA, Alessandro NUVOLARI, Bart VERSPAGEN, February 2008, MAPPING
TECHNOLOGICAL TRAJECTORIES AS PATENT CITATION NETWORKS. AN
APPLICATION TO DATA COMMUNICATION STANDARDS, SEWP 166
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/documents/sewp166
We use patent citation networks to study the dynamics of technical change in Ethernet, a
standard for data communication. We first consider the evolution of the broad technological
system of Local Area Networks (LANs) and we identify the most significant inventions within
the specific subfield of Ethernet. Then we analyse the structure of connectivity of patent
citation networks to reconstruct the main technological trajectories in this subfield. Our results
suggest that these technological trajectories are characterized by the presence of a number of
interconnected technological environments which cluster following an engineering logic. These
clusters include the most significant patents related to 'milestones inventions' in the evolution
of the LAN technology. Thus, our analysis of the structure of connectivity in patent citation
networks seems appropriate to capture both the cumulativeness associated to the
development of a specific technology and the significant discontinuities that punctuate the
trajectory, as well as the technological interrelatedness characterising large technical systems.
Önder NOMALER, Bart VERSPAGEN, June 2007, KNOWLEDGE FLOWS, PATENT
CITATIONS AND THE IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON TECHNOLOGY
http://www.merit.unu.edu/publications/wppdf/2007/wp2007-022.pdf
Technological innovation depends on knowledge developed by scientific research. The
number of citations made in patents to the scientific literature has been suggested as an
indicator of this process of transfer of knowledge from science to technology. We provide an
intersectoral insight into this indicator, by breaking down patent citations into a sector-to-sector
matrix of knowledge flows. We then propose a method to analyze this matrix and construct
various indicators of science intensity of sectors, and the pervasiveness of knowledge flows.
Our results indicate that the traditional measure of the number of citations to science literature
per patent captures important aspects intersectoral knowledge flows, but that other aspects
are not captured. In particular, we show that high science intensity implies that sectors are net
suppliers of knowledge in the economic sector, but that science intensity does not say much
about pervasiveness of either knowledge use or knowledge supply by sectors. We argue that
these results are related to the specific and specialized nature of knowledge.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
79
Alan C. MARCO, Economics Letters, Vol. 94, No. 2, February 2007, THE DYNAMICS OF
PATENT CITATIONS
http://ssrn.com/abstract=949461 The use of patent citations as a measure of patent "quality" increased dramatically in recent
years. In this note, I use hazard estimation to explore the dynamics of patent citation. I find
evidence of unobserved heterogeneity and a means to separate patent quality from citation
"inflation."
Dietmar HARHOFF, Stefan WAGNER, October 2006, MODELING THE DURATION OF
PATENT EXAMINATION AT THE EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE
http://www.ip.mpg.de/shared/data/pdf/harhoff_wagner_06.pdf
We analyze the duration of the patent examination process at the European Patent Office
(EPO). Our data contain information related to the patent’s economic and technical relevance,
EPO capacity and workload as well as novel citation measures which are derived from the
EPO’s search reports. In our multivariate analysis we estimate competing risk specifications in
order to characterize differences in the processes leading to a withdrawal of the application by
the applicant, a refusal of the patent grant by the examiner or an actual patent grant. Highly
cited applications are approved faster by the EPO than less important ones, but they are also
withdrawn less quickly by the applicant. The process duration increases for all outcomes with
the application’s complexity, originality, number of references (backward citations) in the
search report and with the EPO’s workload at the filing date. Endogenous applicant behavior
becomes apparent in other results: more controversial claims lead to slower grants, but faster
withdrawals, while relatively well-documented applications (identified by a high share of
applicant references appearing in the search report) are approved faster and take longer to be
withdrawn.
Emanuele BACCHIOCCHI and FABIO MONTOBBIO, KNOWLEDGE DIFFUSION FROM
UNIVERSITY AND PUBLIC RESEARCH. 2006, A COMPARISON BETWEEN US, JAPAN
AND EUROPE USING PATENT CITATIONS
http://www.cespri.unibocconi.it/
This paper estimates the process of diffusion and decay of knowledge from university, public
laboratories and corporate patents in six countries and tests the differences across countries
and across technological fields using data from the European Patent Office. It finds that
university and public research patents are more cited relatively to companies’ patents.
However these results are mainly driven by the Chemical, and Drugs & Medical fields and US
universities. In Europe and Japan, where the great majority of patents from public research
comes from national agencies, there is no evidence of a superior fertility of university and
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
80
public laboratories patents vis-à-vis corporate patents. The distribution of the citations lags
shows that knowledge embedded in university and public research patents tends to diffuse
more rapidly relatively to corporate ones in particular in US, Germany, France and Japan.
Colin WEBB, Hélène DERNIS, Dietmar HARHOFF, Karin HOISL, October 2005, ANALYSING
EUROPEAN AND INTERNATIONAL PATENT CITATIONS: A SET OF EPO PATENT
DATABASE BUILDING BLOCKS
http://www.oecd.org/sti/working-papers
This paper presents a preliminary set of European and international citation data tables
designed to enable researchers to become familiar with the subject and undertake a range of
analyses. It addresses analytical and statistical issues such as why citations from international
searches and European searches should be combined; the calculation of citation lags; use of
International Patent Classification (IPC) codes for grouping patents according to technology;
treatment of references to Non-Patent Literature (NPL); and the notion that many publications,
from different patenting authorities, covering the same invention can be cited. Differences
between US and European citations are also discussed.
The database was built using data kindly provided by the European Patent Office (EPO) and
its development has been carried out under the auspices of OECD’s Patent Statistics Task
Force. The work is an OECD contribution to a wider project to construct a worldwide patent
database mainly co-ordinated by EPO and the World Intellectual Property Organisation
(WIPO). It has already provided useful input into EPO’s current PATSTAT database project to
make their raw patent data more accessible for statistical and econometric analyses.
It is assumed that potential users are reasonably familiar with recent citation analysis
literature. Possible avenues of research such as knowledge spillovers (geographical or across
fields of science), knowledge flows and value of patents are not addressed in this paper but
dealt with in a related document, by the same authors, “European Patent Citations – How to
count and interpret them?”. For the development of citations-based indicators and examples of
a wide range of related analyses, reference to the significant body of work based on US
citations, by researchers such as Hall, Jaffe and Trajtenberg, is encouraged.
The data tables currently cover all patent applications published by EPO and WIPO, under the
Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT), from their introduction in 1978 up until November 2001.
Elif BASCAVUSOGLUY, September 2005, DOES INTERNATIONAL TRADE TRANSFER
TECHNOLOGY TO EMERGING COUNTRIES? A PATENT CITATION ANALYSIS
http://www.open.ac.uk/ikd/workingpapers/workingpaper_14.pdf
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81
The purpose of this paper is to assess empirically whether trade flows carry disembodied
knowledge to emerging countries. Endogenous growth theory predicts that productivity growth
rates of countries are related through international trade linkages and associated embodied
and disembodied knowledge spillovers. Patent statistics are an output indicator of innovation.
This allows patent citations to reflect the process of knowledge diffusion. Combining an
endogenous growth framework with a patent citation analysis, we evaluate whether more
exporting or importing countries tend to cite more foreign patents, i.e. learn more from foreign
technology. The empirical estimation concerns the relative number of backward citations and
bilateral trade flows between 18 emerging and 10 technology source countries, at a sectoral
level, for the period of 1980-1998. We contribute to the previous literature by taking into
account several proximity measures and by distinguishing sector’s technological intensities.
Our results show that trade transfers technology across countries and sectors, but the extent
of the diffusion depends mainly on cultural and historical proximities and the level of technical
capacity of host countries.
Bart VERSPAGEN, June 2005, MAPPING TECHNOLOGICAL TRAJECTORIES AS PATENT
CITATION NETWORKS. A STUDY ON THE HISTORY OF FUEL CELL RESEARCH
http://edocs.ub.unimaas.nl/loader/file.asp?id=1065
Paola CRISCUOLO, Bart VERSPAGEN, 2005, DOES IT MATTER WHERE PATENT
CITATIONS COME FROM? INVENTOR VERSUS EXAMINER CITATIONS IN EUROPEAN
PATENTS, 2005-018, MERIT-Infonomics Research Memorandum series
http://edocs.ub.unimaas.nl/loader/file.asp?id=1061
This paper investigates whether the distinction between patent citations added by the inventor
or the examiner is relevant for the issue of geographical concentration of knowledge flows (as
embodied in citations). The distinction between inventor and examiner citations enables us to
work with a more refined citation indicator of knowledge flows. We use information in the
search reports of patent examiners at the European Patent Office to construct our dataset of
regional patenting in Europe, and apply various econometric models to investigate our
research question. The findings point to a significant localization effect of inventor citations,
after controlling for various other factors, and hence suggest that knowledge flows are indeed
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
82
geographically concentrated. This holds true also for a sub-sample of patents owned by 169
large multinational enterprises (MNEs). The results for the sample of MNEs suggest that
multinational firms seek out specific regional knowledge specializations (and hence at least
partly reinforce geographical concentration), but are also able to transfer knowledge "easier"
over larger distances.
Bulat SANDITOV, 2005, PATENT CITATIONS, THE VALUE OF INNOVATIONS AND PATH-
DEPENDENCY
http://www.merit.unu.edu/publications/phd/BSanditov.pdf
This paper examines how the framework of path-dependency and technological trajectories
can be applied to explain the observed distribution of patent values as it is revealed in the
distribution of patent citations. A very simple model of based on generalized Polya urn
processes is proposed to describe evolution of patent values. It is shown that the model fits
empirical distribution of patent citations (USPTO and EPO data) surprisingly well.
Ruslan LUKACH and Joseph PLASMANS, 2005, MEASURING KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVERS
USING THE INFORMATION FROM THE BELGIAN FIRMS’ PATENT CITATION DATA
http://www.cesifo-
group.de/pls/guestci/download/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%202002/CESifo%20Working
%20Papers%20July%202002/754.pdf
This paper conducts a comprehensive study of patent citations in patents granted to Belgian
corporate applicants by the United States and the European Patent Offices using qualitative
response variable analysis. The analysis uncovered different patterns of citations in patents,
which belong to different industrial classes. The studied citation data provides evidence of
inter- or intra-firm and inter- or intra-industry knowledge spillovers which are industry specific.
Bronwyn H. HALL, Adam JAFFE and Manuel TRAJTENBERG, RAND Journal of Economics,
Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring 2005, pp. 16–38, MARKET VALUE AND PATENT CITATIONS
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/papers/HallJaffeTrajtenberg_RJEjan04.pdf
We explore the usefulness of patent citations as a measure of the “importance” of a firm’s
patents, as indicated by the stock market valuation of the firm’s intangible stock of knowledge.
Using patents and citations for 1963–1995, we estimate Tobin’s q equations on the ratios of
R&D to assets stocks, patents to R&D, and citations to patents. We find that each ratio
significantly affects market value, with an extra citation per patent boosting market value by
3%. Further findings indicate that “unpredictable” citations have a stronger effect than the
predictable portion, and that self-citations are more valuable than external citations.
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83
Emmanuel DUGUET and Megan MacGARVIE, September 2003, HOW WELL DO PATENT
CITATIONS MEASURE FLOWS OF TECHNOLOGY? EVIDENCE FROM FRENCH
INNOVATION SURVEYS
http://129.3.20.41/eps/dev/papers/0411/0411018.pdf
Patent citation data are used in a growing body of economics and business research on
technological diffusion. Research in this area uses “backward” citations to measure
technological knowledge acquired by the patenting entities studied. “Forward” citations
(citations to the firm’s patents made by other patents) have been interpreted as a measure of
the knowledge diffusing outward from the patenting entity. Until now, there exists little
evidence on whether or not patent citations are a good measure of knowledge flows. Our
paper assesses the legitimacy of using European patent citations as a measure of technology
flows. It uses information from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) collected by the French
Service des Statistiques Industrielles (SESSI), which contain firms’ responses to questions
about their innovative activity. We show that patent citations are indeed related to firms’
statements about their acquisition and dispersion of new technology, but that the strength and
statistical significance of this relationship varies across geographical regions and across
channels of knowledge diffusion.
Jacques MICHEL, Bernd BETTELS, 2001, Scientometrics, Vol. 51, No. 1 (2001) 185–201,
PATENT CITATION ANALYSIS - A CLOSER LOOK AT THE BASIC INPUT DATA FROM
PATENT SEARCH REPORTS
http://www.akademiai.com/content/h74j50p35k266287/
The present paper focuses on some important requirements for understanding patent search
reports in view of their use for statistical analysis. It is pointed out and illustrated that the
comprehensiveness and the quality of a given search report may vary significantly as a
function of the patent office drawing up the report. These differences imply consequences with
respect to the safe use and interpretation of the data. The authors stress that a sound analysis
based on patent citation data can only be performed in a meaningful way if the analyst has a
minimum knowledge of the underlying search reports.
19. Patents in regions
Eurostat (European Commission), May 2011, PATENT STATISTICS AT EUROSTAT:
METHODS OF REGIONALISATION, SECTOR ALLOCATION AND NAME HARMONISATIO
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84
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/product_details/publication?p_product_cod
e=KS-RA-11-008
Over the last decade, Eurostat regularly increased and improved the dissemination of patent
data with the production of new indicators on economic activities, basing its current production
almost exclusively on the Worldwide Statistical Patent Database PATSTAT, developed by the
European Patent Office (EPO). The core of the work is linked to the European Research Area
(ERA), and to the priorities of the Europe 2020 strategy. There is therefore a need to enhance
the information available in patent databases.
In that context Eurostat developed and implemented several innovative methodologies to be
applied on PATSTAT data. They relate to regionalisation of patentee and inventors addresses
(according to the NUTS classification), as well as sector allocation and name harmonisation of
applicants. Specifics on the developed methodologies and their results in terms of coverage
and accuracy are compiled in the present publication “PATENT STATISTICS AT EUROSTAT:
Methods for Regionalisation, Sector Allocation and Name Harmonisation”.
CHRIST Julian P., April 2010, GEOGRAPHIC CONCENTRATION AND SPATIAL
INEQUALITY: TWO DECADES OF EPO PATENTING AT THE LEVEL OF EUROPEAN
MICRO REGIONS
http://econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/36703/1/631009469.pdf
This paper contributes with empirical findings to the research on structural inequality and
geographic concentration of European inventorship activity at the level of European micro
regions. We analyze the spatial structure and dynamics of 43 technology fields (ISI-SPRU-
OST concordance) and 6 high-technology fields based on data on EPO patent applications
and EPO inventors for the reference period 1977-2004. Based upon OECD RegPAT database
(January 2009), we extract EPO patent applications (fractional counting) and inventor IDs (full
counting), which are spatially linked to 819 European micro regions (OECD TL3), covering the
EU-25, Switzerland and Norway. Besides standard descriptives, we compute Herfindahl-
Hirschman indices, location quotients and weighted locational and spatial GINI coefficients.
We confirm the hypotheses that (i) the technology fields under analysis differ in their overall
size with respect to the stock of EPO patent applications and inventors; (ii) the share of
regions with LQ > 1 has decreased compared to the share of regions with at least a single
patent application; (iii) the sample of European regions is characterized by highly concentrated
and unequally distributed technology fields; (iv) spatial inequality of EPO patenting and
inventor location has decreased significantly within the last two decades for most technology
fields. In this respect, our quantitative approach clearly depicts dispersion tendencies and
decreasing inequality, although structural dynamics differ between technology fields.
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85
Anja DETTMANN, Sidonia VON PROFF, 2010, INVENTOR COLLABORATION OVER
DISTANCE – A COMPARISON OF ACADEMIC AND CORPORATE PATENTS
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewpaper.php?id=501924&cf=43
The paper compares academic and corporate patents in Germany to shed light on the
geographical distribution of the inventors. The residences of the inventors show different
patterns in the two datasets. Furthermore, we analyze the spatial distance between inventors
for patents invented in collaboration and give insights into the distance’s change over a time
period of 14 years. The distance between collaborating inventors of corporate patents exceeds
that of inventors of academic patents. In spite of the rise of ICT and cheap passenger
transportation the collaboration distances have not increased. This supports earlier literature
on the importance of proximity in innovation.
Julian P. CHRIST, Revised version as of November 2009, THE GEOGRAPHY AND CO-
LOCATION OF EUROPEAN TECHNOLOGY-SPECIFIC CO-INVENTORSHIP NETWORKS
http://econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/30182/1/621679356.pdf
This paper contributes with empirical findings to European co-inventorship location and
geographical coincidence of co-patenting networks. Based on EPO co-patenting information
for the reference period 2000-2004, we analyze the spatial configuration of 44 technology-
specific co-inventorship networks. European co-inventorship (co-patenting) activity is spatially
linked to 1259 European NUTS3 units (EU25+CH+NO) and their NUTS1 regions by inventor
location. We extract 7.135.117 EPO co-patenting linkages from our own relational database
that makes use of the OECD RegPAT (2009) files. The matching between International Patent
Classification (IPC) subclasses and 44 technology fields is based on the ISI-SPRU-OST-
concordance. We confirm the hypothesis that the 44 co-inventorship networks differ in their
overall size (nodes, linkages, self-loops) and that they are dominated by similar groupings of
regions. The paper offers statistical evidence for the presence of highly localized European co-
inventorship networks for all 44 technology fields, as the majority of linkages between NUTS3
units (counties and districts) are within the same NUTS1 regions. Accordingly, our findings
help to understand general presence of positive spatial autocorrelation in regional patent data.
Our analysis explicitly accounts for different network centrality measures (betweenness,
degree, eigenvector). Spearman rank correlation coefficients for all 44 technology fields
confirm that most co-patenting networks co-locate in those regions that are central in several
technology-specific co-patenting networks. These findings support the hypothesis that leading
European regions are indeed multi-field network nodes and that most research collaboration is
taking place in dense co-patenting networks.
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86
Jarno HOEKMAN, Koen FRENKEN, Frank VAN OORT, 2008, COLLABORATION
NETWORKS AS CARRIERS OF KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVERS: EVIDENCE FROM EU27
REGIONS
http://ideas.repec.org/p/cri/cespri/wp222.html
The geography of innovation traditionally concentrates on localised knowledge spillovers, yet
neglects collaboration networks as a means to access knowledge outside the region. Using
publication and patent data for 1316 regions in the EU27 plus Norway and Switzerland, we
find that both localised knowledge spillovers and the knowledge spillovers stemming from
collaboration affect the innovative performance of regions. The results provide support for EU
policies aimed at creating European collaboration networks.
Jarno HOEKMAN, Koen FRENKEN, Frank VAN OORT, 2008, THE GEOGRAPHY OF
COLLABORATIVE KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN EUROPE
http://ideas.repec.org/p/cri/cespri/wp214.html
We analyze inter-regional research collaboration as measured by scientific publications and
patents with multiple addresses, covering 1 316 NUTS 3 regions in 29 European countries.
The estimates of gravity equations show the effects of geographical and institutional distance
on research collaboration. We also find evidence for the existence of elite structures between
excellence regions and between capital regions. The results suggest that current EU science
policy to stimulate research collaboration is legitimate, but doubt the compatibility between EU
science policy and EU cohesion policy.
Stéphane MARAUT, Hélène DERNIS, Colin WEBB, Vincenzo SPIEZIA and Dominique
GUELLEC, June 2008, THE OECD REGPAT DATABASE: A PRESENTATION, STI
WORKING PAPER 2008/2, Statistical Analysis of Science, Technology and Industry
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/22/19/40794372.pdf
The OECD REGPAT database presents patent data that have been linked to regions
according to the addresses of the applicants and inventors. The data have been .regionalised.
at a very detailed level so that more than 2 000 regions are covered across OECD countries.
REGPAT allows patent data to be used in connection with other regional data such as GDP or
labour force statistics, and other patent-based information such as citations, technical fields
and patent holder’s characteristics (industry, university, etc.), thus providing researchers with
the means to develop a rich set of new indicators and undertake a broad range of analyses to
address issues relating to the regional dimension of innovation. By making regionalised patent
data available to all students interested in the field, the OECD aims to stimulate research and
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contribute to a better understanding of the regional dimension of innovation. In addition, the
methodology used for the construction of REGPAT is published, to give users the opportunity
to suggest modifications and thus contribute to improvements in the quality of REGPAT. The
full technical description of the REGPAT database as accessible to users is provided in annex.
Patent data provide unique insights into the outcome and characteristics of inventive activities,
including at regional level. They have limitations however, like all data sources, and should be
handled with methodological care.
Paola GIURI, Myriam MARIANI, December 2007, INVENTORS AND THE GEOGRAPHICAL
BREADTH OF KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVERS
http://www3.druid.dk/wp/20080001.pdf
This paper studies the geographical breadth of knowledge spillovers. Previous research
suggests that knowledge spillovers benefit from geographical proximity in technologically
active and rich regions more than elsewhere. An alternative view explains the geographical
breadth of knowledge spillovers as a function of the characteristics and personal networks of
the individuals. We test these two competing theories by using information provided directly by
the inventors of 6,750 European patents (PatVal-EU survey). Our results confirm the
importance of inventors’ personal background.
However, compared to previous research, we find that the level of education of the inventors is
key in shaping the geographical breadth of knowledge spillovers. Highly educated inventors
rely more on geographically wide research networks than their less educated peers. This holds
after controlling for the mobility of the inventors and for the scientific nature of the research
performed.
Differently, location matters only in the very rare regions in Europe that perform the bulk of the
research in the specific discipline of the inventors.
Olof EJERMO, March 2007, ARE QUALITY-ADJUSTED PATENTS MORE
GEOGRAPHICALLY CLUSTERED THAN RAW PATENT COUNTS? EVIDENCE USING
SWEDISH DATA
http://en.scientificcommons.org/33361036
Two ‘stylized facts’ about innovations form the underlying motivation for this paper. First,
various studies have found that innovations tend to be geographically concentrated. Secondly,
innovation data based on patent counts indicate that most patents have very low economic
value. It has also successfully been shown that ‘quality-adjusting’ patent data (by means of
e.g. citations received from later patents) bring them a great deal closer to the innovation
concept. At the same time, a large literature has developed which tries to evaluate the impact
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
88
of regional innovativeness on factors such as regional growth and employment. This literature
is often hampered by lack of adequate data, but patent counts are regularly employed to
measure regional innovativeness. It therefore seems to be of importance to examine whether it
matters if patent data is quality-adjusted. A step in this direction is provided in this paper by
examining if patent data become more or less geographically concentrated after quality-
adjustment. I find that quality-adjusted patents are more geographically concentrated than raw
patent grants. This result is obtained analyzing all patents aggregated. When analyzing
different technologies separately, this result is retained for between 55-67 per cent of
technologies. One third of technologies instead become geographically more dispersed.
20. Patents and R&D (investments)
Malte MOSEL, JUNE 2010, COMPETITION, IMITATION, AND R&D PRODUCTIVITY IN A
GROWTH MODEL WITH SECTOR-SPECIFIC PATENT PROTECTION, CESIFO WORKING
PAPER NO. 3109
http://www.ifo.de/pls/guestci/download/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%202010/CESifo%20W
orking%20Papers%20June%202010/cesifo1_wp3109.pdf
Recent empirical studies suggest a need for a flexible patent regime responding to industry
characteristics. In practice, sector-specific modifications of patent strength already exist but
lack theoretical foundation. This paper intends to make up for this neglect by scrutinizing in
what direction industry characteristics influence optimal patent strength. It is found that patents
ought to be weaker, the more intense competition, the higher R&D productivity, and the more
intricate reverse engineering are. Unlike similar step-by-step innovation models of economic
growth, the model assumes Cournot competition and introduces an empirically substantiated
measure of sector differences in the ability to catch up with the technological leader. It is found
that for most empirically plausible cases the familiar inverted-U relation between patent length
and growth carries over to the Cournot set-up.
Gaétan de RASSENFOSSE, June 2010, PRODUCTIVITY AND PROPENSITY: THE TWO
FACES OF THE R&D-PATENT RELATIONSHIP
https://dipot.ulb.ac.be:8443/dspace/bitstream/2013/59648/1/2010-025-DERASSENFOSSE-
productivity.pdf
This paper tackles one of the most persistent criticism of patent statistics. Because not all
inventions are patented, the patent-to-R&D ratio reflects both a productivity effect (the number
of inventions created per unit of research input) and a propensity effect (the proportion of
inventions patented). We propose a solution to this identification problem. Our methodology
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89
uses information on the density of patent value and leads to results that are easy to interpret. It
is applied to a novel data set of priority patent applications in which each patent is fractionally
allocated to its inventors’ countries and to the technological areas to which it belongs.
Interestingly, it is frequently observed that an industry may exhibit a low number of patents per
unit of R&D in one country yet actually be more productive than the same industry in another
country where the patent-to- R&D ratio is higher.
Ana PÉREZ-LUÑO, Ramón VALLE-CABRERA, March 2010, HOW DOES KNOWLEDGE
MATTER PATENTING INVENTIONS?
http://www.upo.es/serv/bib/wpbsad/bsad1001.pdf
While there is robust empirical evidence that firm patenting is positively associated with
various measures of overall performance and competitiveness, less is known about what
determines the patenting choice. For this reason, this paper examines whether R&D
expenditure and the type of knowledge used in the invention determine the decision to patent.
With this aim, we use a sample of firms and the European Patent Office to analyse how the
combination of R&D expenditure and knowledge codifiability, observability and simplicity
influences the patent decision. Our results contribute to the literature and assist R&D
managers by showing that both R&D and codified knowledge have a positive impact on the
number of inventions patented by a firm, while observable knowledge has a negative impact
on patents. Furthermore, we find that the effect of R&D expenditure on the propensity to
patent inventions is negatively moderated by knowledge observability and simplicity.
Ion E. ANGHEL, Victor IANCU, 2010, INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY AS A STIMULATOR OF
SCIENTIFIC CREATION AND INNOVATION
http://ideas.repec.org/p/ror/wpince/100207.html
In modern times, when progress is made through knowledge and knowledge is predominantly
produced/used, industrial property rights, their protection and related specialized institutions
play a stimulating role. Therefore, this paper presents first the requirements for stimulating
scientific and technological creation and innovation in the European Research Area, in close
relation to industrial property rights. In this context, we assess the size of scientific research
and innovation in Romania in relation to industrial property rights. Considering the
requirements for stimulating scientific and technological creation and innovation, we deal with
issues on adapting and maintaining dynamism in law and institutional regulations, in order to
achieve convergence, in general, and convergence in the industrial property field, in particular.
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90
Angus C. CHU, September 2009, MACROECONOMIC EFFECTS OF INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY RIGHTS: A SURVEY
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17342
This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual
property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent-policy instruments
and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the
distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection as well as empirical
evidence on the effects of patent rights. Then, the second part considers the international
aspects of IPR protection. In summary, this survey draws the following conclusions from the
literature. Firstly, different patent-policy instruments have different effects on R&D and growth.
Secondly, there is empirical evidence supporting a positive relationship between IPR
protection and innovation, but the evidence is stronger for developed countries than for
developing countries. Thirdly, the optimal level of IPR protection should tradeoff the social
benefits of enhanced innovation against the social costs of multiple distortions and income
inequality. Finally, in an open economy, achieving the globally optimal level of protection
requires an international coordination (rather than the harmonization) of IPR protection.
Donja DARAI, Jens GROßER, Nadja TRHAL, March 2009, PATENTS VERSUS SUBSIDIES -
A LABORATORY EXPERIMENT
http://www.research-projects.uzh.ch/p13104.htm
This paper studies the effects of patents and subsidies on R&D investment decisions. The
theoretical framework is a two-stage game consisting of an investment and a market stage. In
equilibrium, both patents and subsidies induce the same amount of R&D investment, which is
higher than the investment without governmental incentives. In the first stage, the firms can
invest in a stochastic R&D project which might lead to a reduction of the marginal production
costs and in the second stage, the firms face price competition. Both stages of the game are
implemented in a laboratory experiment and the obtained results support the theoretical
predictions. Patents and subsidies increase investment in R&D and the observed amounts of
investment in the patent and subsidy treatment do not differ significantly across both
instruments. However, we observe overinvestment in all three treatments. Observed prices in
the market stage converge to equilibrium price levels.
Joanna POYAGO-THEOTOKY, Khemarat Talerngsri TEERASUWANNAJAK, February 2009,
R&D PRODUCTIVITY AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS PROTECTION REGIMES
http://ideas.repec.org/p/lbo/lbowps/2009_06.html
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91
We study firms’ preferences towards intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes in a North-South
context, using a simple duopoly model where a ‘North’ and a ‘South’ firm compete in a third
market. Unlike other contributions in this field, we explicitly introduce the South’s capability to
undertake cost-reducing R&D, but maintain the South’s inferiority in utilizing and managing its
R&D. In contrast to traditional results, we show that the North may encourage lax IPR
protection provided that its South rival’s R&D productivity is sufficiently high, while the South
may find it in its best interest to strictly enforce IPR protection if its R&D productivity is low. In
this sense, our results do not support the idea of universal or uniform IPR protection regime. In
addition, we find that if firms are allowed to agree on any level of information exchange when
IPR protection is strictly enforced, such an exchange can always be established as long as
each firm is ensured that what it gets to utilize in return is greater than a half of what it gives to
its rival.
Jérôme DANGUY, Gaetan DE RASSENFOSSE and Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE DE LA
POTTERIE, 2009, THE R&D-PATENT RELATIONSHIP: AN INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE, No
7/2009, EIB Papers from European Investment Bank, Economic and Financial Studies
http://www.eib.org/attachments/efs/eibpapers/eibpapers_2009_v14_n01_en.pdf#page=172
This paper re-visits the empirical failure to establish a clear link between R&D efforts and
patent counts at the industry level. It is claimed that the “propensity-to-patent” concept should
be split into an “appropriability propensity” and a “strategic propensity”. The empirical
contribution is based on a unique panel dataset composed of 18 industries in 19 countries
over 19 years. The results confirm that the R&D-patent relationship is affected by research
productivity, appropriability propensity and strategic propensity factors. The observed increase
in the propensity to file for patents is much stronger for supranational (that is, triadic or
regional) patents than for priority filings, suggesting that the current patent hype is essentially
the result of a globalization phenomenon.
Angus C. CHU, October 2007, ECONOMIC GROWTH AND PATENT POLICY:
QUANTIFYING THE EFFECTS OF PATENT LENGTH ON R&D AND CONSUMPTION
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5476/1/MPRA_paper_5476.pdf
Is the patent length an effective policy instrument in stimulating R&D? This paper develops a
generalized variety-expanding growth model and then calibrates the model to the aggregate
data of the US economy to analyze the effects of extending the patent length. The numerical
exercise suggests that at the empirical range of patent-value depreciation rates, extending the
patent length beyond 20 years leads to only a very small increase in R&D despite R&D
underinvestment in the market economy. On the other hand, shortening the patent length can
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92
lead to a significant reduction in R&D and consumption. This paper also makes use of the
dynamic general-equilibrium framework to examine the fraction of total factor productivity
(TFP) growth that is driven by R&D, and the calibration exercise suggests that about 35% to
45% of the long-run TFP growth in the US is driven by R&D. Finally, this paper identifies and
analytically derives a dynamic distortion of the patent length on saving and investment in
physical capital that has been neglected by previous studies, which consequently
underestimate the distortionary effects of patent protection.
Gaétan DE RASSENFOSSE and Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE DE LA POTTERIE, March
2008, A POLICY INSIGHT INTO THE R&D-PATENT RELATIONSHIP, CEB Working Paper N°
08/008
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733308002977
This paper investigates whether patent counts can be taken as indicators of macroeconomic
innovation performance. The empirical model explicitly accounts for the two components of
patenting output: research productivity and patent propensity. The empirical analysis aims at
explaining the `correct' number of priority filings in 34 countries. It confirms that the two
components play a substantial role as witnessed by the impact of the design of several
policies, namely education, intellectual property and science and technology policies. A major
policy implication relates to the design of patent systems, which ultimately induces, or allows
for, aggressive patenting strategies.
Shiferaw GURMU, Fidel PÉREZ-SEBASTIÁN, February 2007, PATENTS, R&D AND LAG
EFFECTS: EVIDENCE FROM FLEXIBLE METHODS FOR COUNT PANEL DATA ON
MANUFACTURING FIRMS
http://www.ivie.es/downloads/docs/wpasad/wpasad-2007-03.pdf
Hausman, Hall and Griliches (1984) and Hall, Griliches and Hausman (1986) investigated
whether there was a lag in the patent-R&D relationship for the U.S. manufacturing sector using
1970’s data. They found that there was little evidence of anything but contemporaneous
movement of patents and R&D. We reexamine this important issue employing new longitudinal
patent data at the firm level for the U.S. manufacturing sector from 1982 to 1992. To address
unique features of the data, we estimate various distributed lag and dynamic multiplicative
panel count data models. The paper also develops a new class of count panel data models
based on series expansion of the distribution of individual effects. The empirical analyses
show that, although results are somewhat sensitive to different estimation methods, the
contemporaneous relationship between patenting and R&D expenditures continues to be
rather strong, accounting for over 60% of the total R&D elasticity. Regarding the lag structure
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of the patents-R&D relationship, we do find a significant lag in all empirical specifications.
Moreover, the estimated lag effects are higher than have previously been found, suggesting
that the contribution of R&D history to current patenting has increased from the 1970’s to the
1980’s.
Rajneesh NARULA, Grazia D. SANTANGELO, 2007, LOCATION AND R&D ALLIANCES IN
THE EUROPEAN ICT INDUSTRY
http://ideas.repec.org/p/dgr/unumer/2007008.html
This paper shows empirically that in an intra-industry oligopolistic scenario the location of a
firm’s innovative activities plays an important role in determining its partner selection in R&D
alliances. Such a role is mainly attributed to a strategic use of R&D alliances as a means to
limit knowledge flows and protect competences, rather than to promote knowledge flows. By
drawing on a novel dataset matching alliances and patent data for the European ICT industry,
the econometric analysis shows that partners’ prior co-location (at both national and sub-
national regional level), previous ties and technological overlap matter in the choice of partner,
while common nationality has a negative impact on alliance formation.
Florence JAUMOTTE and Nigel PAIN, December 2005, FROM IDEAS TO DEVELOPMENT:
THE DETERMINANTS OF R&D AND PATENTING, OECD ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT
WORKING PAPERS NO. 457
http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/displaydocumentpdf/?cote=ECO/WKP(2005)44&doclan
guage=en
This paper uses panel regressions to investigate the effects of innovation policies and
framework factors on business R&D intensity and patenting for a sample of 20 OECD
countries over the period 1982-2001. Both sets of factors are found to matter; the main
determinants of innovativeness appear to be the availability of scientists and engineers,
research conducted in the public sector (including universities), business-academic links, the
degree of product market competition, a high level of financial development and access to
foreign inventions. The effect of direct public financial support for business R&D is generally
positive but modest, though it may larger for cash-constrained firms. Intellectual property rights
appear to increase patenting significantly, but have little impact on R&D spending. Finally, the
paper takes a closer look at the labour market for researchers, estimating jointly equations for
employment and wages. Although the supply of scientists and engineers is eventually
responsive to wage differentials, both with other professions and across countries, the
evidence suggests that it may difficult to raise significantly the real amount of domestic R&D in
the short run because the supply of researchers is relatively inelastic.
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Jürgen JANGER, April 2005, THE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM IN AUSTRIA
— INPUT AND OUTPUT INDICATORS
http://www.oenb.at/en/img/mop_2005_1_analyses3_tcm16-26926.pdf
This paper analyzes the efficiency of research and development activities in Austria in
comparison with other countries. Public and private R&D spending, which has been increasing
steadily for years, is evaluated against a set of performance indicators, such as the number of
scientific publications and patents. The efficiency of Austria’s R&D system is currently rated
‘average’. This may change in the future, given that productivity growth in the Austrian
economy is declining despite the continually rising research and development ratio. In his
conclusions, the author presents suggestions for increasing the efficiency of the system,
particularly in the areas of university education and research, in the light of the strong
interaction with the corporate sector.
Rachel GRIFFITH, Rupert HARRISON and John VAN REENEN, September 2004, HOW
SPECIAL IS THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP? USING THE IMPACT OF US R&D
SPILLOVERS ON UK FIRMS AS A TEST OF TECHNOLOGY SOURCING
http://ideas.repec.org/p/ifs/ifsewp/04-32.html
How much does US-based R&D benefit other countries? We test the hypothesis that foreign
firms locating inventors in the US benefit from "technology sourcing". In other words, do
foreign research labs located on US soil tap into US R&D spillovers? Using panels of British
and US firms matched to patent data we show that British firms who had established a high
proportion of US-based inventors by 1990 benefited disproportionately from the growth of the
US R&D stock over the next 10 years. We estimate that UK TFP would have been at least 5%
lower in 2000 (about $14bn) in the absence of the US R&D growth in the 1990s. By contrast,
the growth of the UK R&D stock did not appear to have a major benefit for US firms who
located R&D labs in the UK. The "special relationship" between the UK and the US appears
distinctly asymmetric.
Corinne LANGINIER and Gian Carlo MOSCHINI, February 2002, Working Paper 02-WP 293,
THE ECONOMICS OF PATENTS: AN OVERVIEW
http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/research/webpapers/paper_2061.pdf
In this paper, we review the economic effects of intellectual property rights and specifically
address the economics of the patent system. The production and dissemination of new
knowledge is fraught with market failures because knowledge is a public good. Patents
provide a second-best solution to the resulting appropriability problem. We review the main
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benefits and costs of the patent system, focusing on the role that patents play in providing
incentives for innovation, in promoting the dissemination of knowledge, and in helping
technology transfer and commercialization of new technology. From a more normative
perspective, we address the questions of what the features of an optimal patent system are
and whether the patent system is socially desirable. We examine the problem of the optimal
length and scope of patent protection, both for the case of a single innovation and for the
richer case of cumulative innovations. Finally, we review the issues related to how the patent
system influences the market structure and research and development investments.
Zvi GRILICHES, January 1998, PATENT STATISTICS AS ECONOMIC INDICATORS: A
SURVEY, p. 287 - 343, in: R&D and Productivity: The Econometric Evidence, University of
Chicago Press, ISBN: 0-226-30886-3
http://www.nber.org/books/gril98-1
21. University patents/academic patents
Birgitte ANDERSEN and Federica ROSSI, March 2010, BEYOND BAYH-DOLE:
UNIVERSITIES AND THE USE OF PROPRIETARY AND NON-PROPRIETARY
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (IP) MARKETPLACES
http://www.dime-eu.org/working-papers/wp14/90
Building upon an original survey of universities in the United Kingdom, this paper brings an
original perspective to the debate on the motivations and effectiveness of academic patenting,
and on the exchange of intellectual property (IP) using different protection mechanisms. It
seeks to analyze the extent to which the assumptions underlying the legislation that
encourages the patenting of academic research outcomes on the part of universities (such as
the much debated Bayh-Dole Act in the US) are justified. It does this by exploring the
motivations (related to finance, Innovation, strategic relationships, competitive advantage)
underpinning the Universities’ choice to engage in IP marketplaces. The paper also explores
whether universities support the view, implicitly held by mainstream economics, that the patent
marketplace is efficient or works automatically. It does this by investigating the obstacles
(related to market search, transparency, contract negotiation and enforcement, as well as
regulation problems) that are encountered when exchanging IP.
By considering a wide range of IP marketplaces (patents, copyright, open source and Non-
patented technology) and IP governance forms (e.g. alternative licensing forms), the paper
builds a more complete picture of the activities and experiences of universities than that
provided by the existing literature on university knowledge transfer, which usually focuses on
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just two main channels for IP transfer, namely patents and publications. This approach allows
us to investigate questions such as: are patent rationales related to enhanced knowledge
transfer and income generation also applicable to other non-proprietary IP? Do problems
underpinning the patent marketplace also affect other forms of IP? Does the use of different IP
marketplaces and of different IP governance forms confer specific advantages or obstacles to
Universities?
Antonio DELLA MALVA, Francesco LISSONI and Patrick LLERENA, February 2010,
INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE AND ACADEMIC PATENTING: FRENCH UNIVERSITIES AND
THE INNOVATION ACT OF THE 1999, WP n. 29
http://portale.unibocconi.it/wps/wcm/connect/resources/file/eb948f48986b80c/WP29_Dellamal
vaetal.pdf
The Innovation Act was introduced by the French government in 1999, with the aim of
encouraging academic institutions to protect and commercialize their scientists' inventions. We
explore the effects of the Act on the distribution of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) over
academic scientists' inventions. We find that before the Act, academic institutions had a strong
tendency to leave such IPRs in the hands of their main funders, namely public research
organizations (such as CNRS or INSERM), and business companies. After the introduction of
the Act, French academic institutions have increased their propensity to claim IPRs over their
employees' invention, mainly under the form of co-ownership with business companies. This
result varies with the technological class of the patent, the presence and age of a TTO within
the university, and the university size and type.
Francesco LISSONI, Peter LOTZ, Jens SCHOVSBO, Adele TRECCANI, March 2009,
ACADEMIC PATENTING AND THE PROFESSOR’S PRIVILEGE: EVIDENCE ON DENMARK
FROM THE KEINS DATABASE
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewabstract.php?id=6085&cf=32
Since 1957, the Professor’s Privilege allowed Danish professors to retain IP rights over the
results of their research. This changed in 2000, when Denmark – as the first of several other
countries ‐ abolished the Privilege and granted IP over research results to universities. We
show that in the first years following the abolition, a considerable amount of patenting activity
has moved out of the professors’ hands into those of their universities. We also show that the
bulk of academic patenting consists of inventions owned by business companies, and this is
holds true both before and after the privilege. In this respect, the Danish case conforms to the
European pattern as described in the recent literature and provides useful suggestions on the
likely effects of re‐distribution of IP rights between universities and their faculties.
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Antonio MESSENI PETRUZZELLI, February 2009, UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY R&D
COLLABORATIONS: A JOINT-PATENTS ANALYSIS
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewpaper.php?id=5731&cf=32
Empirical studies on R&D collaborations between universities and firms have mainly centred
their attention on universities and firms characteristics and strategies that favour the
establishment of collaborative agreements. In this paper, we extend the current research
framework investigating the role that specific relational attributes may play on the relevance of
such collaborations. Specifically, we focus on three relevant factors, namely technological
relatedness, national culture similarity, and prior collaborations ties between universities and
firms. We develop testable hypotheses about their impact on the innovative performance of
R&D university industry collaborations, and test them on a sample of 796 university-industry
collaborations, established by 27 universities located in 12 different European countries. Our
results suggest that innovation value has an inverted U-shaped relation with partners
technological relatedness. In addition, universities and firms belonging to similar cultural
contexts and having had previous ties are more able to achieve better innovative outcomes.
Magnus HOLMÉN, Daniel LJUNGBERG, February 2009, WHAT DO ACADEMICS DO? AN
OPPORTUNITY PERSPECTIVE ON UNIVERSITY LITERATURE
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewabstract.php?id=5972&cf=32
This paper investigates what academics do from an opportunity perspective by characterizing
industrial dynamics and economics of innovation literature in terms of how they study
universities and academics. Opportunities are characterized in terms of its sources and targets
and in terms of how the opportunities are identified and exploited. This framework is applied to
papers published in a set of leading journals, including Research Policy, Journal of
Technology Transfer and Industrial and Corporate Change. A main part of the literature
focuses on narrowly selected modes of exploitation activities, such as patenting and firm
creation, as well as characterizing university-industry interaction. Surprisingly little is known
about what academics do and how they behave, as the literature has not analyzed academic
behavior from a process perspective. The existing literature analyzes university output as if it
produces for product markets rather than analyzing the role and the nature of how academics
act as specialized service providers across a range of activities. This paper argues that this is
a serious shortcoming, since it hampers our understanding of universities and academics as
dynamic actors. In contrast to the current narrow focus on university entrepreneurship, the
paper suggests that universities and academics can be characterized in terms of their degree
of experimental behavior.
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Daniel LJUNGBERG, Maureen MCKELVEY, February 2009, ON THE RELATIVE
IMPORTANCE OF FIRMS’ ACADEMIC PATENTS
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewpaper.php?id=6013&cf=32
This paper examines the relative technological impact of academic patents assigned to firms.
First, two, potentially serious, biases of the existing literature on the topic are brought forward;
a) there exists a selection bias when studying university-owned patents in Europe, due to the
relatively low share of these as compared to firm-owned and b) studying university-owned
rather than university-invented patents carries the implicit, and quite questionable, assumption
that academic inventions are substitutes rather than complements to industrial ones. Second,
a sampling approach including firms’ academic patents and a matched control sample is
suggested to overcome these biases. Third, an empirical study using this sampling approach
is presented.
Two samples have been collected, each composed of 220 patents, applied for at the
European Patent Office between 1985 and 2000. The academic patents have one or more
inventor(s) affiliated to a Swedish university, and are sampled from the KEINS database.
Forward patent citations are used as a proxy for the ‘importance’ or 'technological impact' of
the patents. This sampling method allows for an analysis of whether patents in the two
samples can be considered relatively more or less important.
The preliminary findings suggests no significant difference in technological impact between
firms' academic and non-academic patents. We find that in general academic involvement are
in deepening, rather than broadening, into technologies 'familiar' to the firm. This part of the
study will be more deeply explored.
Dirk CZARNITZKI, Katrin HUSSINGER, Cédric SCHNEIDER, 2009, WHY CHALLENGE THE
IVORY TOWER? NEW EVIDENCE ON THE BASICNESS OF ACADEMIC PATENTS,
Discussion Paper No. 09-029
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1492917
Historically universities used to generate knowledge that was made available to the public at
no further cost, as the research was financed by the government, and thus by a country’s tax
paying inhabitants. The emergence of private universities and new laws on intellectual
property rights changed the common practice, though. While the main activities of universities
remain education and academic research that is disseminated through journal publication
activity, commercial activities are on the rise in public science. For instance, the U.S. Bayh-
Dole Act from 1980 enables universities (and small business) to claim property rights through
patent filings even if the underlying research was financed by public money. This trend poses
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the question whether universities still contribute significantly to the amount of basic science
produced in an economy when becoming commercially active. While journal publications are
certainly targeting basic research questions, the content of academic patens is not
unambiguously of basic nature. If universities would move to more applied research, this could
have detrimental effects for total welfare in the economy. While often presumed in academic
literature and policy discussions there is little empirical evidence showing that academic
patents protect more basic inventions than corporate patents. This study provides new
evidence on the basicness of academic patents using professor patents for Germany linked to
patent opposition data from the European Patent Office (EPO). Patent oppositions are the
most important mechanism by which the validity of patents filed at the EPO can be challenged.
We argue that academic patents should be less likely to be subject to validity challenges if
they are more basic than corporate patents. Disputes about the validity of intellectual property
rights, as patent litigations and patent oppositions, have been interpreted by the scientific
literature as a legal mechanism to enhance patent quality and the effectiveness of the patent
system and as an indication for competition. In this paper, we follow the latter interpretation.
Previous literature has revealed that patents themselves are rather strategic tools for firms
than instruments for intellectual property protection. This evidence supports the interpretation
of legal disputes over patent validity as an indication for competition in product and technology
markets. Basic inventions, which are not immediately directed at a marketable product, are
less likely to threaten the current competitive position of companies than more applied
inventions as they are less likely to threat other firms’ position in product markets. In our
empirical analysis, we find that academic patents are opposed less frequently than a control
group of corporate patents. This suggests that academic patents cover rather basic inventions
with a low immediate commercial value not threatening current returns of potential patent
opposers in the corporate sector. The effect is weaker for academic patents in collaboration
with the business sector, which suggests that those patents are evaluated as more applied or
threatening by the business sector.
Sidonia VON LEDEBUR, Guido BUENSTORF, Martin HUMMEL, August 2009, UNIVERSITY
PATENTING IN GERMANY BEFORE AND AFTER 2002: WHAT ROLE DID THE
PROFESSORS’ PRIVILEGE PLAY?, ISSN 1864-7057
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.econ.mpg.de%2Ffiles%2F2009%2
Fstaff%2FBuenstorf_2009-068.pdf
We examine ownership patterns of German university-invented patents before and after the
abolition of the ‘professors' privilege’ in 2002 to explore how the legal change affected
patenting activities. Our data show a shift from individually-owned and firm-owned patents to
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100
university-owned patents, which becomes increasingly strong over the years. Differences in
the patent experience of inventors and universities further help explain the variance in
ownership patterns. Both experienced and inexperienced inventors are affected by the legal
change.
Antti-Jussi TAHVANAINEN, FINNISH UNIVERSITY TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN A WHIRL
OF CHANGES. – A Brief Summary –. Helsinki: ETLA, Elinkeinoelämän Tutkimuslaitos, The
Research Institute of the Finnish Economy, 2009, 17 p. (Keskusteluaiheita, Discussion papers,
ISSN 0781-6847; No. 1188).
http://www.etla.fi/files/2306_Dp1188.pdf
Finnish university technology transfer is currently caught in the turbulences of major changes
in the national innovation system. Three virtually simultaneous changes are of special
importance. The first is the massive on-going renewal of the Universities Act governing the
Finnish higher education system in its entirety. It was originally initiated to provide universities
with more financial and operational flexibility and autonomy and, thus, with better premises to
fulfil the three mandates (i) to educate, (ii) to conduct academic research, and (iii) to impact
societal welfare. The second change is the foundation of the so-called Strategic Centres for
Science, Technology and Innovation (Finnish acronym: SHOK) that aim at establishing and re-
enforcing long-term research cooperation between the academia and the Industry. The final
change is the enactment of the new University Inventions Act in early January 2007. The Act
provided universities with the rights of ownership to inventions made in sponsored research
that, according to the principle of the professor’s privilege, were considered property of the
respective academic inventors prior to the change. In the beginning of 2008 Etlatieto Ltd.
interviewed 11 of 20 research universities active in Finland to capture the potential impacts the
three changes might have on university technology transfer activities. The set of interviewees
comprised professionals conducting different tasks in the technology transfer units of
universities ranging from research directors to technology transfer officers to lawyers.
According to the results, the expected benefits of the renewal of the Universities Act mainly
comprise of the increasing financial flexibility of universities hoped to translate into a
proliferation of tools available for the transfer of university technology (support of start-ups,
investments etc.), and a general increase in the profile of technology transfer functions that
should alleviate their current deficiency in resources. Challenges regarding the Universities
Act, on the other hand, relate to the lack of administrative and business related expertise in
universities required to fulfil the up-coming tasks mandated by the Act, and the lack of
commitment on part of universities’ management resulting in insufficient resources. SHOKs, in
turn, are expected to enable longer project cycles, to reduce administrative burden, to
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encourage the setting of scientifically more ambitious research objectives, as well as to
increase research collaboration and its efficiency. Challenges were identified to relate to
proposed IPR-practices potentially endangering the academic freedom of university research,
the incentive schemes of top researchers to participate in SHOK projects, the inefficiencies of
a large participant base, and the dangers of a strongly industry driven mode of co-operation to
academic values. Finally, the benefits of the University Inventions Act are expected to emerge
from the gradual dismantling of the “ivory tower of academe”, an increase in the amount of
received invention disclosures, and more efficient administrative practices in university
technology transfer functions. Perceived challenges, in turn, include interpretational difficulties
of the Act, the modest commitment of university management to university technology transfer
in general, increasing administrative burdens, and strong cultural differences between
researchers, industry and university administration.
Sidonia VON LEDEBUR, February 2009, UNIVERSITY-OWNED PATENTS IN WEST AND
EAST GERMANY AND THE ABOLITION OF THE PROFESSORS’ PRIVILEGE
ftp://137.248.191.199/RePEc/pum/wpaper/WP4.pdf
This paper analyses the development of universities’ patent applications in Germany before
and after the abolition of the ‘professors' privilege’ in 2002. By means of a database with all
patent applications of German universities with professors among the inventors (1990-2006),
systematic changes in the trend are investigated. There are contrasts in the patenting patterns
of universities with or without long patenting experience. A structural break at the point of the
new legislation is found only for universities without patent activities in the past. This indicates
the importance of collecting patenting experience and that the amount of patents is path-
dependent.
Joaquín M. AZAGRA-CARO, 2009, RECOGNISING THE VALUE OF BUSINESS PATENTS
WITH UNIVERSITY INVENTORS
http://ipts.jrc.ec.europa.eu/publications/pub.cfm?id=2279
Support to university patent ownership is a popular R&D policy initiative to promote effective
knowledge sharing. Yet the broader, unintentional, consequences of such support on the link
between public funding of university R&D and increased university-industry cooperation have
not been studied. Through regression models on the determinants of university-owned patents
in the EU and US, tentative results illustrate that the risk of negative consequences exists.
Complementing current metrics about university performance with statistics about business
patents with university inventors would help avoid such a risk and find definitive quantitative
evidence.
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Makiko TAKAHASHI, René CARRAZ, March 2009, ACADEMIC PATENTING IN JAPAN:
ILLUSTRATION FROM A LEADING JAPANESE UNIVERSITY
http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/1002557
In April 2004, the Japanese government incorporated the national universities as “independent
administrative entities”. This important change in Japan’s research culture has allowed its
universities to gain higher control and oversight over their strategic development trajectories.
In this paper, we will present an analysis centered on the legislative changes concerning
intellectual property and their impact on Japanese universities. We will particularly focus our
attention on a leading Japanese research institution: Tohoku University. We will analyze the
different mechanisms that have been put in place to foster the use of patents by faculty
members. In that respect, we introduce a differentiation between university-owned and
university-invented patents, and put emphasis on the difference in patenting behaviors among
scientific disciplines. Finally, we argue that contractual research is a major channel for the
technology transfer of Japanese universities’ knowledge and findings.
Julien PÉNIN, February 2009, ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF UNIVERSITY PATENTING:
WHAT CAN WE LEARN BY ASKING DIRECTLY TO ACADEMIC INVENTORS?
http://ideas.repec.org/p/ulp/sbbeta/2009-04.html
This paper examines the consequences of university patenting by using an original source of
information: The point of view of French academic inventors, i.e. French university professors
who are also inventors of European patents. Via a survey we collected information about 280
French academic inventors. This enables us to put forward new insights with respect to the
effect of university patenting on the diffusion of scientific research, incentives to do basic
research, commercialization of university inventions and access to upstream knowledge. In
particular, the study suggests a trade-off between enabling the transfer of university inventions
to industry in some sectors and delaying the dissemination of scientific research. On the one
hand, most academic inventors acknowledge a lag in their publication process directly
attributable to the patent application but, on the other hand, in life science disciplines a large
majority of respondents who have had one of their inventions commercialized, believe that this
would not have been the case had a patent not been there.
Gustavo CRESPI, Pablo D'ESTE, Roberto FONTANA, Aldo GEUNA, December 2008, THE
IMPACT OF ACADEMIC PATENTING ON UNIVERSITY RESEARCH AND ITS TRANSFER,
SEWP 187
http://ideas.repec.org/p/icr/wpicer/01-2009.html
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103
This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the impact of academic patenting. On the
basis of CV information and two separate surveys, we provide the first empirical evidence for a
sample of UK academics in physics, chemistry, computer science and a subset of engineering.
The main contribution of this paper is twofold. First, our econometric results suggest that
academic patenting is complementary to publishing at least up to a certain level of patenting
output after which we found some evidence of a substitution effect. Second, our analysis of the
potential impact of patenting on the other channels of knowledge transfers seems to indicate
that patenting does not have a negative impact on the other channels of knowledge exchange.
We have found some positive correlation between the stock of patents and other channels of
knowledge transfer, however, also in this case, we have found that a substitution effect sets in
indicating a inverted U shape type of relationships between patenting and other knowledge
transfer channels.
Joaquín M. AZAGRA-CARO, October 2008, PATENTS OWNED BY PUBLIC RESEARCH
CENTRES: EU VS. US - UNIVERSITIES VS. PUBLIC RESEARCH ORGANISATIONS
http://www.epip.eu/conferences/epip03/papers/Azagra-Caro_Euracapat%201%20-
%20EPIP.pdf
Some literature has paid attention to the increase of university-owned patents in many EU
countries, following the same trend in the US. We build an indicator to compare between EU
and US university-owned patents in relative terms and both of them with public research
organisations (PRO)-owned patents. We find that EU universities have almost caught-up US
universities and EU PROs in patent ownership. We conclude that the challenge is to
understand the large differences between US and EU PROs. Our econometric estimations
show that while returns to scale are decreasing for university-owned patents, they are constant
for PRO-owned patents, and illustrate the possibility that none of them are compatible with
other alternatives for technology transfer.
Dirk CZARNITZKI, Katrin HUSSINGER, Cédric SCHNEIDER, July 2008, COMMERCIALIZING
ACADEMIC RESEARCH: THE QUALITY OF FACULTY PATENTING
ftp://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp08069.pdf
The knowledge produced by academic scientists has been identified as a potential key driver
of technological progress. Recent policies in Europe aim at increasing commercially orientated
activities in academe. Based on a sample of German scientists across all fields of science we
investigate the importance of academic patenting. Our findings suggest that academic
involvement in patenting results in greater knowledge externalities, as academic patents
appear to generate more forward citations. We also find that in the European context of
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104
changing research objectives and funding sources since the mid-90’s, the “importance” of
academic patents declines over time. We show that academic entrants have patents of lower
“quality” than academic incumbents but they did not cause the decline, since the relative
importance of patents involving academics with an existing patenting history declined over
time as well. Moreover, a preliminary evaluation of the effects of the abolishment of the
“professor privilege” (the German counterpart of the U.S. Bayh-Dole Act) reveals that this legal
disposition led to an acceleration of this apparent decline.
Antonio DELLA MALVA, Francesco LISSONI, Patrick LLERENA, May 2008, INSTITUTIONAL
CHANGE AND ACADEMIC PATENTING: FRENCH UNIVERSITIES AND THE INNOVATION
ACT OF THE 1999
http://ideas.repec.org/p/ulp/sbbeta/2008-09.html
Recent empirical work in the field of university-industry technology transfer has stressed the
importance of IPR-related reforms and university patenting has major forces behind the
success of US high-tech industry. European policy-makers have been tempted to explain the
poorer technological performance of their countries with the lower propensity of their academic
institutions to get engaged in patenting and commercializing their research results. As a
consequence, a number of measures have been taken to promote academic awareness of
IPRs, as part of more comprehensive policies in favour of academic commercialization and
entrepreneurship. This paper explores university patenting, and the related policies, in France.
We provide evidence that university patenting in that countries has been underestimated by
policy-makers’ perceptions: French academic scientists are in fact responsible for no less than
3% of patents by French inventors at the European Patent Office. However, only 10% of
academic-invented patents are owned by domestic universities, with the remainder assigned
both to firms and to Public Research Organizations (PROs). We then explore the impact of the
Innovation Act, passed in France in 1999. We find that the Act has significantly increased the
likelihood an academic patent to be assigned to a university rather than to a business
company. We also find, that the opening of a technology transfer office in a university appears
to have a stronger and more significant impact than the Act on the decision of universities to
retain IPRs over their scientists’ discoveries.
Nicolas VAN ZEEBROECK, Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE DE LA POTTERIE and
Dominique GUELLEC, 2008, PATENTS AND ACADEMIC RESEARCH: A STATE OF THE
ART
http://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/08-013.html
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105
The sharp increase in academic patenting over the past 20 years raises important issues
regarding the generation and diffusion of academic knowledge. Three key questions may be
raised in this respect: What is behind the surge in academic patenting? Does patenting affect
the quality and quantity of universities' scientific output? Does the patent system limit the
freedom to perform academic research? The present paper summarizes the existing literature
on these issues. The evidence suggests that academic patenting has only limited effects on
the direction, pace and quality of research. A virtuous cycle seems to characterise the patent-
publication relationship. Secondly, scientific anti-commons show very little effects on academic
researchers so far, limited to a few countries with weak or no research exemption regulations.
In a nutshell, the evidence leads us to conclude that the benefits of academic patenting on
research exceed their potential negative effects.
Francesco LISSONI, January 2008, ACADEMIC INVENTORS AS BROKERS: AN
EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS OF THE KEINS DATABASE
http://ideas.repec.org/p/cri/cespri/wp213.html
Academic inventors are university scientists who appear as designated inventors of patents
whose assignee may be either a business company, their own academic institution, or a
governmental administration. The paper analyses their relationships entertained with co-
inventors, who may be either academic colleagues, students, or, very often, industrial
researchers. Gould’s and Fernandez’s (1989) definition of “brokerage” roles is adjusted to
patent data, and complemented with information drawn from the academic inventors’
publications and their answers to a short questionnaire. Only very few academic inventors are
found to hold brokerage positions. Those who do have a large number of patents, a strong
publication record and higher-than-average propensity to keep in touch with their business co-
inventors after patents, for information exchanges of all sorts. Some of them achieve influence
well beyond the walls of the Ivory Tower.
Thomas BRENNER, Sidonia VON LEDEBUR, 2008, ACADEMIC INVENTORS’ CHOICE OF
TRANSFER CHANNELS DEPENDENT ON COMMERCIALISATION EXPERIENCE – A
THEORETICAL MODEL
http://ideas.repec.org/p/pum/wpaper/2008-01.html
Academic inventions have to be transferred to industry to become an innovation. Scientists
face multiple options for this transfer, from informal knowledge transfers to patents, licences,
and spin-offs. These transfer channels require different efforts and inhibit different degrees of
complexity. We want to theoretically explain the inventor’s choice of a certain transfer channel.
Under the assumption that (i) dealing with complexity is similar to facing risk, and (ii) scientists
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are risk averse, we show that the chosen transfer channels are path-dependent: with
increasing commercialisation experience inventors choose more complex channels, up to a
certain limit of complexity.
Daisuke KANAMA and Kumi OKUWADA, September 2007, A STUDY ON UNIVERSITY
PATENT PORTFOLIOS: PORTFOLIO OF PATENT APPLICATION FROM TOHOKU
UNIVERSITY
http://www.nistep.go.jp/achiev/abs/eng/mat147e/pdf/mat147ae.pdf
Recently the infrastructure of the intellectual property system and the formulation of the
associated rules have been established in universities. The number of joint research and
funded research projects are also increased, as well as the number of patent applications and
licenses from the national universities. However, the fact is that the whole patent application
activities have not necessarily been fully understood by their own researchers at individual
national universities prior to their conversion to independent administrative institutions.
Under this survey, a specific university is chosen as a model. Then, all the information related
to patent applications among the results of research and development carried out at the
university is collected and analyzed. The study aims to clarify the realities of intellectual
contributions of the university in patent applications by utilizing the information.
Elefthérios SAPSALIS, 2007, FROM SCIENCE TO LICENSE: AN EXPLORATORY
ANALYSIS OF THE VALUE OF ACADEMIC PATENTS
http://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/07-018.html
This paper analyses the industrial and entrepreneurial value of 334 patent families applied for
by six major Belgian universities. It identifies the value determinants underlying the patent
documents and highlights the positive and significant impact of collaboration and tacit scientific
knowledge of the inventors’ team on the probability to get licensed. It also shows that there are
technological differences between patents licensed to existing companies and the ones
licensed to spin-offs. It suggests that existing companies are more likely to license
technologies to be cited by academia when spin-offs exploit academic patents that are cited by
the industry. These results advocate that existing companies and start-ups are two different
valorisation patterns to commercialise different types of academic technologies. The paper
stresses also the importance of collaboration between public and corporate research teams in
order to get patent licensed. It pleads for a better management and valorisation scheme of
patents co-applied for by many academic assignees and draws attention on the need to focus
on academic researchers with a high scientific profile in terms of publications in order to
crystallize their tacit knowledge into valuable patents.
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107
Elefthérios SAPSALIS, 2007, SCIENCE VS TECHNOLOGY: A FACULTY DILEMMA? 35
YEARS OF PATENTING AT THE SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE OF
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
http://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/07-017.html
In the large and complex debate related to the creation, diffusion and protection of academic
research results, this paper intends to understand the characteristics of academics involved in
the knowledge creation as measured by publications and patents. Moreover, it aims to
produce some piece of evidence that it is possible to manage patenting activity without
jeopardizing publishing. Analysing the publishing and patenting activity of the 326 faculty
members of the School of Engineering at Columbia University between 1970 and 2005, we
find out that more than the Bayh-Dole Act, it is the implementation of the IP policy at Columbia
University that has created an incentive to patent at the engineering school. We also find out
that the probability and propensity to patent is influenced by the scientific production of a
researcher, his contacts with industry but also his mindset towards patenting. Analysing the
scientific productivity of the researchers, we confirm that heterogeneity in the career might
deter the productivity of a researcher. We find that scientific collaboration with industry and
technological collaboration on application-oriented projects with public or industrial partners
had a positive impact on the probability to be among the best scientists. Finally our results
suggest that patenting activity undertaken by Columbia University does not divert academics
from publishing and relay the recent findings of the literature.
Gustavo A. CRESPI, Aldo GEUNA, Bart VERSPAGEN, December 2006, UNIVERSITY IPRS
AND KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER. IS THE IPR OWNERSHIP MODEL MORE EFFICIENT?,
SEWP 154
http://ideas.repec.org/p/sru/ssewps/154.html
This paper contributes to the current debate on university patents and knowledge transfer at
two levels. First we present the results of the comparison of European and US academic
patenting systems, and show that the common perception that Europe is lagging behind the
US in terms of university patenting is far from being correct. Second, we develop an
assessment of the efficiency of the academic IPR ownership model. Specifically, we assess
whether university-owned patents in Europe are more often applied, and/or more economically
valuable, than patents that result from university research but are not owned by universities
(university-invented). Our analysis starts from the observation that in our sample of six major
European countries, about two-thirds of the patents that result (at least partly) from university
research, are not owned by universities (but instead are owned in large measure by private
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firms). Given the different importance of Public Research Organisations (PRO) in the 6 EU
countries considered, we have done the same analysis also for the case of PRO-owned and
PRO-invented patents. A review of the theory of research joint ventures suggests that
ownership is the result of a bargaining game, in which the relative bargaining positions
depend, among other things, on characteristics of the inventive process. This is the starting
point for applying two separate statistical treatment models. Our results indicate that, after
correcting for observable patent characteristics, there are no significant differences between
university-owned and university-invented patents.
Martin MEYER, Puay TANG, February 2006, EXPLORING THE "VALUE" OF ACADEMIC
PATENTS: IP MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN UK UNIVERSITIES AND THEIR
IMPLICATIONS FOR THIRD-STREAM INDICATORS
http://ideas.repec.org/p/sru/ssewps/143.html
Third-Stream activities have become increasingly important in the UK. However, valuing them
in a meaningful way still poses a challenge to science and technology analysts and policy
makers alike. This paper reviews the general literature on "patent value" and assesses the
extent to which these established measures, including patent citation, patent family, renewal
and litigation data, can be applied to the university context. Our study examines indicators of
patent value for short and mid-term evaluation purposes, rather than indicators that suffer from
long time lags. We also explore the extent to which differences in IP management practices at
universities may have an impact on the validity and robustness of possible indicators. Our
observations from four UK universities indicate that there are considerable differences
between universities as to how they approach the IP management process, which in turn has
implications for valuing patents and how they track activity in this area. In their current form,
data as collected by universities are not sufficiently robust to serve as the basis for evaluation
or resource allocation.
Chiara FRANZONI and Francesco LISSONI, 2006, ACADEMIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP,
PATENTS AND SPIN-OFFS: CRITICAL ISSUES AND LESSONS FOR EUROPE
http://ideas.repec.org/p/cri/cespri/wp180.html
The paper proposes a definition of “academic entrepreneur” which draws from the economics,
history, and sociology of science.
Academic entrepreneurs are scientists with a brilliant scientific record, who build their careers
through discipline-building, the creation and of new labs and teams, and an appetite for the
economic resources necessary to pursue those goals. Long-standing institutional features of
national university systems explain to what extent commercial activities may or may not help
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academic entrepreneurs to progress in their careers. European policies for technology transfer
should address these features, rather than aiming straight at university patenting and firm
creation.
Stefano BRESCHI, Francesco LISSONI and Fabio MONTOBBIO, 2006, UNIVERSITY
PATENTING AND SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTIVITY. A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF ITALIAN
ACADEMIC INVENTORS
http://ideas.repec.org/p/cri/cespri/wp189.html
Based on longitudinal data for a matched sample of 592 Italian academic inventors and
controls, the paper explores the impact of patenting on university professors’ scientific
productivity, as measured by publication and citation counts. Academic inventors (university
professors who appear as designated inventors on at least one patent application) publish
more and better quality papers than their colleagues with no patents, and increase their
productivity after patenting. Endogeneity problems are addressed using instrumental variables
and applying inverse probability of treatment weights. The beneficial effect of patenting on
publication rates last longer for academic inventors with more than one patent.
Joaquín M AZAGRA CARO, Ignacio FERNÁNDEZ DE LUCIO and Antonio GUTIÉRREZ
GRACIA, Research Evaluation, volume 12, number 1, APRIL 2003, UNIVERSITY PATENTS:
OUTPUT AND INPUT INDICATORS … OF WHAT?
http://www.ingenio.upv.es/en/node/5067#.T-HTP7U0PZU
This paper aims to clarify the nature of university patents as outputs of different types of
research and inputs of diverse instruments of interaction, focusing on the case of the
Polytechnic University of Valencia at departmental level. A patent production function tests
what kind of research gives rise to patents. Several funding functions show for which
instruments patents are a better input. University patents appear to be an output of costly and
long-term oriented research, either publicly or privately financed, and also the input of a certain
type of interaction — not through licensing but through signalling competencies. The fear that
university patents negatively affect the quality of research is not justified, as they are the
outcome of research at the frontiers of science. However, it is true that university patents only
stimulate interaction with those firms that have enough absorptive capacity. If interaction with
less capable firms is intended, other instruments are required.
Bhaven N. SAMPAT, David C. MOWERY, Arvids A. ZIEDONIS, 2002/2003, CHANGES IN
UNIVERSITY PATENT QUALITY AFTER THE BAYH-DOLE ACT: A RE-EXAMINATION
http://www.card.iastate.edu/research/stp/papers/Sampat-Mowery-Ziedonis.pdf
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The Bayh-Dole Act permitted universities to retain rights to patents resulting from government
funded academic research, and encouraged university entry into patenting and licensing.
Though it is widely recognized to be a major change in federal policy towards academic
research, surprisingly little empirical analysis has been directed at assessing the impacts of
Bayh-Dole on the academy and on university-industry research relationships. An important
exception is the work of Henderson, Jaffe and Trajtenberg (1998) which examined the impact
of Bayh-Dole on the quality of university patents, as measured by the number of times they are
cited in subsequent patents. The authors found that the quality of academic patents declined
dramatically after Bayh-Dole, a finding that has potentially important policy implications. In this
paper, we show that their results are not robust to using a longer stream of citation data, i.e.
they are driven by truncation bias. This has important implications not only for thinking about
Bayh-Dole, but also for future work using patent citations as economic indicators.
Tom COUPÉ, ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2000/2001, ACADEMIC R&D AND
UNIVERSITY PATENTS
http://student.ulb.ac.be/~tcoupe/patents1.pdf
Many studies have shown indirect effects of academic research by linking academic research
to firm patents. However, since the Bayh-Dole act, universities are allowed to patent inventions
that were funded by federal money and to retain the royalties that these patents generate. As
a consequence, universities now are interested in protecting their ‘profitable’ discoveries, just
like any commercial firm doing R&D. In this paper, we apply the econometric techniques
traditionally used to estimate the patent production function of firms on data for American
universities. We find that more money spent on academic research leads to more university
patents, with elasticities that are similar to those found for commercial firms.
22. Community patent
Jérôme DANGUY & Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE, 2011, COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF
THE COMMUNITY PATENT
http://ideas.repec.org/p/ulb/ulbeco/2013-101071.html
For more than 40 years, governments and professional associations have acted, voted or
lobbied against the implementation of the Community Patent (COMPAT, officially called the
EU Patent). The econometric results and simulations presented in this paper suggest that,
thanks to its attractiveness in terms of market size and a sound renewal fee structure, the
COMPAT would drastically reduce the relative patenting costs for applicants while generating
more income for the European Patent Office and most National Patent Offices. The loss of
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111
economic rents (€400 million would be lost by patent attorneys, translators and lawyers) and
the drop of controlling power by national patent offices elucidate further the observed
resistance to the Community Patent.
Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE, March 2010, EUROPE SHOULD STOP TAXING
INNOVATION
http://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/worpat/v33y2011i1p16-22.html
The European Union failed to achieve its Lisbon agenda target of spending three percent of
GDP on research and development, and so, in the EU2020 strategy, has given itself another
decade to meet this goal. Meanwhile, the EU has been leapfrogged by China in terms of
business R&D spend. One key element to stimulate innovation and ultimately drive European
growth would be to create the long-awaited single EU patent. Today’s fragmented European
patent system is poor value for money and overly complex, not least because national patent
systems still have the last word over all European patents on their territory. After nearly 50
years of failure to create the EU patent, language issues and the design of a centralised patent
litigation court remain unresolved. The recent EU Council deal on an ‘enhanced’ European
patent system is potentially a step forward, though many problems remain unresolved.
Jérôme DANGUY, Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE, December 2009, COST-BENEFIT
ANALYSIS OF THE COMMUNITY PATENT
http://ideas.repec.org/p/bre/wpaper/366.html
For more than 40 years, governments and professional associations have acted, voted or
lobbied against the implementation of the Community Patent (COMPAT). The econometric
results and simulations presented in this paper suggest that, thanks to its attractiveness in
terms of market size and a sound renewal fee structure, the COMPAT would drastically reduce
the relative patenting costs for applicants while generating more income for the European
Patent Office and most National Patent Offices. The loss of economic rents (€400 million
would be lost by patent attorneys, translators and lawyers) and the drop of controlling power
by national patent offices elucidate further the observed resistance to the Community Patent.
Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE, June 2009, LOST PROPERTY: THE EUROPEAN PATENT
SYSTEM AND WHY IT DOESN’T WORK
http://www.bruegel.org/publications/publication-detail/publication/312-lost-property-the-
european-patent-system-and-why-it-doesnt-work/
The European patent system faces two broad challenges: a European one and a global one.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
112
Within Europe the key challenge is fragmentation of the patent system, where national patent
offices and jurisdictions have the ultimate power to grant or invalidate patents, leading to
different results across countries and frequently to the opposite result to that arrived at by the
centralised procedure performed by the EPO (European Patent Office).
The global challenge is related to the explosion in patent applications worldwide, which is
causing backlogs at patent offices. While patent applications have been growing in number
fast at most patent offices, the backlog issue is first and foremost an American problem – the
US has a much greater backlog than Europe. The major consequences of these backlogs are
more uncertainty on the market due to several hundred thousand patents pending for lengthy
periods and a drop in quality, in both patent applications and in patents granted.
Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE, Jérôme DANGUY, April 2009, ECONOMIC COST-
BENEFITS ANALYSIS OF THE COMMUNITY PATENT
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/indprop/docs/patent/studies/compact-cost%20-benefit-
study-final_en.pdf
The objective is to provide a detailed analysis of the economic benefits generated by the
implementation of the Community patent (COMPAT) project. The COMPAT project has been
on the negotiation table from before the creation of the European Patent Convention in 1973.
Based on recent research output on the economics of the European patent system and on
new simulations, the present report provides detailed arguments supporting the
implementation of the COMPAT project. By modeling the maintenance rate for the COMPAT
with different hypothetical fee distribution keys, we simulate revenue to patent offices
generated by different renewal fee scenarios. We compare these calculations with the current
situation for European patents to show that the renewal fee income generated for the EPO and
nearly all NPOs will exceed the renewal fees from the current system for a future COMPAT
whose renewal fees correspond to existing costs for about 4 Member States. This therefore
shows that the COMPAT would:
• Allow to have an efficient patent system with an ‘acceptable’ relative price;
• Correct several incongruities that currently reduce the perceived and actual effectiveness of
the European patent system;
• Generate more renewal fees’ income for the EPO and for all NPOs, or nearly all NPOs,
depending on the adopted renewal fee schedule for the COMPAT.
Dietmar HARHOFF, February 2009, ECONOMIC COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF A UNIFIED
AND INTEGRATED EUROPEAN PATENT LITIGATION SYSTEM
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/indprop/docs/patent/studies/litigation_system_en.pdf
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
113
The patent system in Europe is still incomplete. Appropriating returns from patented
technology is impaired by the fact that patent-holders may have to enforce their patent rights in
multiple courts. Moreover, third parties interested in showing that particular patent rights have
been granted erroneously are disadvantaged by having to initiate revocation proceedings in
multiple jurisdictions.
Given that the successful pursuit of these two objectives can generate welfare gains for the
European economy, a unified European patent litigation system has immediate appeal.
The current study seeks to provide approximate cost and benefit calculations in order to inform
policy-makers in Europe about the choices they face in this important field of public policy. The
study groups cost and benefit effects into the following categories: (i) effects from avoiding
duplication of litigation; (ii) effects from changes in the demand for litigation, induced by
changes in the cost structure; (iii) effects from changed incentives for patenting.
Towards performing an assessment of the first two effects, the report collects data from a
variety of sources in order to support the estimates and to test the plausibility of a number of
necessary assumptions. Given that no official data on the incidence, outcomes and cost of
patent litigation exist, an effort is made to triangulate data and estimates in order to
demonstrate that the approximations are justified.
The following results are particularly important. Avoiding duplication of infringement and
revocation cases is likely to generate large benefits for the European economy. The results
obtained here suggest that currently, between 146 and 311 infringement cases are being
duplicated annually in the EU Member States. By 2013, this number is likely to increase to
between 202 and 431 duplicated cases. Total private savings from having access to a unified
Patent Court in 2013 would span the interval between EUR 148 and 289 million.
An assessment of the operating costs of the proposed Patent Court is obviously subject to a
large number of caveats. Based on data from earlier efforts (in particular the Working Party on
Litigation set up under the auspices of the European Patent Organisation), an upper-bound
estimate for the operating costs of a court with a capacity of 940 cases indicates that the Court
would cause operating costs of EUR 27.5 million.
Hence, the cost-benefit assessment focusing on avoided duplication leads to a highly positive
evaluation of the proposal. Even if the low estimate of savings (EUR 148 million) is taken, the
new system would create substantial benefits and reach a benefit-cost ratio of 5.4. However,
this view may be unduly conservative, and the benefit-cost ratio could be as high as 10.5.
Additional benefits could flow in case of additional litigation activity, be it in terms of
infringement or revocation actions. The availability of a low-cost litigation path offered by a
unified Patent Court is likely to lead to additional activity from parties in countries which
currently do not use the European patent system extensively. Moreover, the cost level of
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114
litigation in the unified Patent Court system is likely to be below the cost levels currently
observed in some Member States and parties in these Member States are also likely to
engage in more litigation activity in the medium-run. These effects will also contribute to
generate private and public benefits.
The above estimates and considerations are based on the assumption that the unified Patent
Court will offer litigation at roughly the same cost level as the three largest low-cost national
systems. In a robustness check, the report explores to what extent the gains from saved
duplication would be dissipated if the cost level were higher. The computations show that even
with a substantial average cost increase, benefit-cost ratios remain above one, and for most
scenarios considerably above one.
It is more difficult to predict cost-induced changes in the demand for litigation. The relevance
of such changes will depend on the level and type of costs imposed on users of the new
system. These will be mostly determined by the private costs for legal support and advice, but
also by the fees levied by the Court itself. Measures to contain the private costs to parties in
litigation are important, and the Presidency’s proposal includes a number of such measures
which are discussed in the report with respect to their impact. A particularly promising
measure is to admit representation of parties by specialized European Patent Attorneys.
Another measure of importance is the contribution from the Community budget and from
States which are not EU Member States to the Court’s budget, in order to keep fees at low
levels.
The report also discusses – in a qualitative manner – effects which emerge from changes in
patenting and litigation incentives. It is argued that effects will be beneficial if the unified patent
litigation system puts emphasis on fast and low-cost proceedings, high quality judgement, and
a fair balance between the legitimate interests of patent holders and alleged infringers. It is
emphasized that particularly strong positive welfare contributions can be expected if an
effective and rapid, low-cost revocation procedure is available. The latter feature should
provide an effective means against strategic and (possibly) frivolous litigation activity which
could be mounted in the future by “patent trolls”. The report also comments on particular
design choices in the Presidency’s proposal.
To summarize, this report recommends strongly that the Presidency should proceed in its
efforts to establish a unified and integrated patent litigation system for European patents and
future Community patents. For conservative estimates of the relevant parameters, the
economic benefits from such a system are likely to exceed the costs of the establishment and
operation of the new court by a large multiple of between 5.4 and 10.5. Moreover, with prudent
design choices it should be possible to implement a litigation system that will be balanced and
supportive of overall efforts to improve the quality of patents in Europe.
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115
Hanns ULLRICH, December 2006, NATIONAL, EUROPEAN AND COMMUNITY PATENT
PROTECTION: TIME FOR RECONSIDERATION
http://ssrn.com/abstract=963759
The completion of a Community system of unitary intellectual property protection has come to
a halt when the Commission's proposal for a Community Patent Regulation was shelved by
the Council on political grounds in late 2004. By contrast, under the auspices of the European
Patent Organization a draft European Patent Litigation Agreement has been set up with a view
to have it adopted by those Contracting States of the European Patent Convention (EPC),
which would volunteer for it. Given that conceptually both the Community patent project and
the European Patent Convention date back to the mid of the last century, and that due to
economic and technological change there is a good case to be made for a broad reform effort,
it is proposed to benefit from the present crisis of unification of patent law by undertaking a
review of the entire system with a view to establish a fundamentally modernized system of
protection. This should include the recognition of the role national patents have to play in an
integrated system of patent protection in Europe.
23. Patent fees/costs
Dietmar HARHOFF, Karin HOISL, Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE DE LA POTTERIE, March
2009, LANGUAGES, FEES AND THE INTERNATIONAL SCOPE OF PATENTING
http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/cprceprdp/7241.htm
This paper analyzes firms’ choices regarding the geographic scope of patent protection within
the European patent system. We develop an econometric model at the patent level to quantify
the impact of office fees and translation costs on firms’ decision to validate a patent in a
particular country once it has been granted by the EPO. These costs have been disregarded in
previous studies. The results suggest that both translation costs and fees for validation and
renewals have a strong influence on the behavior of applicants. The estimates are then
employed to simulate the impact of the London Protocol, a recent policy reform which reduces
translation requirements in the European patent system. National validations of patents
granted by the EPO are estimated to increase by 29%.
Dietmar HARHOFF, Karin HOISL, Bettina REICHL, Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE DE LA
POTTERIE, November 2007, PATENT VALIDATION AT THE COUNTRY LEVEL - THE ROLE
OF FEES AND TRANSLATION COSTS, 2007-12
http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/2073/
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116
One feature of the European patent system that is heavily criticized nowadays is related to its
complex fragmentation and the induced cost burden for applicants. Once a patent is granted
by the EPO, the assignee must validate (and often translate) it and pay the renewal fees to
keep it in force in each country in which the applicant seeks protection. The objective of this
paper is to assess to what extent validation and renewal fees as well as translation costs affect
the validation behavior of applicants. We rely on a gravity model that aims at explaining patent
flows between inventor and target countries within the European patent system. The results
show that the size of countries, their wealth and the distance between their capital cities are
significant determinants of patent flows. Validation fees and renewal fees further affect the
validation behavior of applicants. Translation costs seem to have an impact as well. The
important role played by fees suggests that the implementation of cost-reducing policy
interventions like the London Protocol would induce a significant increase in the number of
patents validated in each European country.
Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE DE LA POTTERIE, Didier FRANCOIS, 2006, WP-CEB 06-
002, THE COST FACTOR IN PATENT SYSTEMS
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uni-
lj.si%2Ffiles%2FULJ%2Fuserfiles%2Fulj%2Frazis_razv_projekti%2Fintelektualna_lastnina%2
F%25C5%25A0tudija-The%2520cost%2520factor%2520in%2520patent%2520systems.pdf
The objective of this paper is to assess whether and to what extent the cost of patenting
affects the demand for patents. The empirical analysis, which focuses on the patent systems
of the USA, Japan, and Europe during the year 2003, leads to the following methodological
and empirical observations: i) after the grant, the translation, validation and transaction costs
induced by an effective protection in several European countries witness a highly fragmented
and very expensive European market for intellectual property; ii) for a proper international
comparison, the size of the market and the average number of claims must be accounted for;
iii) when the cost per claim per capita (the 3C-index) is considered, a negative linear
relationship appears between the cost of patenting and the number of claims that are filed; iv)
for a patent designating 13 European countries, the 3C-index is about 10 (2) times higher than
in the US (Japanese) system (for process and translation costs up to the grant); v) The
European market being more than twice as large as the US market in terms of inhabitants, the
3C-index suggests that there would be a clear justification for higher nominal examination fees
at the EPO, that would ensure a rigorous granting process.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
117
24. Patent quality
Sterzi, Valerio (2013), PATENT QUALITY AND OWNERSHIP: AN ANALYSIS OF UK
FACULTY PATENTING
http://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/respol/v42y2013i2p564-576.html
The relationship between ownership structure and the quality of academic inventions has not
been deeply analysed, despite its relevance for the literature on IPR and university–industry
knowledge transfer. This paper fills the gap by using a novel dataset of academic patents in
the UK, both university-owned and corporate-owned for the period 1990–2001.
Justus BARON, Henry DELCAMP, May 2010, ASSESSING INDICATORS OF PATENT
QUALITY: COMPLEX VS. DISCRETE TECHNOLOGIES
http://hal-ensmp.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/48/82/75/PDF/CWPS_2010-07.pdf
This article compares indicators of patent quality in complex and discrete technologies using
factor analysis and econometric methods. The application of common indicators such as
forward citations to complex technologies has repeatedly been put into question. We study the
interchangeability of indicators and their capacity to predict litigation on a sample of 9255
patents. Our results do not support the criticism. Even though there are significant differences
in the behavior of indicators between samples of complex and discrete patents, issues of
complex innovation do not seem to affect the interpretability of quality indicators. Consistently,
both forward citations and a compound quality indicator perform equally well for complex and
discrete technologies in predicting the likelihood of litigation.
Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE DE LA POTTERIE, May 2010, THE QUALITY FACTOR IN
PATENT SYSTEMS, No 2010_016, ECARES Working Papers
http://ideas.repec.org/p/eca/wpaper/2013-59650.html
This paper puts forward a new methodology that aims at comparing quality across patent
systems. Quality is defined as the extent to which patent offices comply with the legal
standards that rule patentability conditions (novelty, inventiveness, transparency). The
methodology consists in a two-layer analytical framework composed of "legal standards" and
their "operational design". Operational designs include several elements that frame the rigour
and transparency of the filtering processes. The in-depth analysis of these two layers for the
patent offices of the USA (USPTO), Japan (JPO) and Europe (EPO) lead to the following
conclusions. The operational designs’ components are interdependent and form a coherent
system. This systemic approach underlines that if legal standards are similar across countries,
their operational design are heterogeneous. The empirical evidence suggests that the EPO
provides higher quality services than the USPTO, the JPO being in an intermediate position.
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These differences call for a multi-faceted convergence of patent systems before worldwide
mutual recognition and worksharing practices are to be put in place.
Yasuo NAKANISHI, Setsuo YAMADA, September 2008, MARKET VALUE AND PATENT
QUALITY IN JAPANESE MANUFACTURING FIRMS
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10285/
We investigate the effect of quality of patents on the market value of firms represented by the
Tobin's q. We consider the number of objections as well as the number of citations. We
construct the database of patent stock, citation-weighted patent stock and objection-weighted
patent stock. Our analysis is pioneering work involving Japanese data, as we were unable to
find any pre-existing Japanese data that considered both truncation problems and quality of
the patent. Our study departs from Hall, Jaffe and Trajtenberg (2000) because of the
application of objections as well as the consideration of the quality of patent citations.
Jean Olson LANJOUW, Mark SCHANKERMAN, December 2002, RESEARCH
PRODUCTIVITY AND PATENT QUALITY: MEASUREMENT WITH MULTIPLE INDICATORS
http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/ei/ei32.pdf
We analyse the determinants of the decline in measured research productivity (the
patent/R&D ratio)using panel data on manufacturing firms in the U.S. for the period 1980-93.
We focus on three factors: the level of demand, the quality of patents, and technological
exhaustion. We first develop an index of patent 'quality' using detailed information on patents
in the U.S. in seven technology fields. Using a factor model, we construct a minimum-variance
index based on four patent characteristics and show that using multiple indicators substantially
reduces the measured variance in quality. We then show that research productivity at the firm
level is negatively related to the patent quality index and the level of demand, as predicted by
an optimizing model of R&D, and positively related to the stock market valuation of patented
innovations held by firms.
25. Protection of business methods (Financial patents)
Bronwyn H. HALL, Grid THOMA, Salvatore TORRISI, February 2009, FINANCIAL
PATENTING IN EUROPE
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14714
We take a first look at financial patents at the European Patent Office (EPO). As is the case at
the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the number of financial patents in Europe has
increased significantly in parallel with significant changes in payment and financial systems.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
119
Scholars have argued that financial patents, like other business methods patents, have low
value and are owned for strategic reasons rather than for protecting real inventions. We find
that established firms in non-financial sectors with diversified patent portfolios own a large
share of financial patents at the EPO. However, new specialized technology providers in the
financial area also hold a number of such patents. Decisions on the financial patent
applications take longer and they are more likely to be refused by the patent office, suggesting
greater uncertainty over validity than for other patents. They are also more likely to be
opposed, which is consistent with the fact that their other economic value indicators are
higher.
Shahid PARVEZ, 2008, PROTECTION OF BUSINESS METHOD UNDER THE PATENT
SYSTEM: DEVELOPMENTS IN EU AND US
http://www.indlawnews.com/Display.aspx?23004e16-9252-4508-8a12-dedc813bdc8f
21st century is the age of computer and globalisation. In this age the branch of Intellectual
Proper is not lagging behind from any other branches of study. The person who works on a
particular subject and devote his or her time, skill and labour, then that concerned person, if
comes out which is something new, innovative and which is also capable of giving benefits to
public at large, then that particular person who comes out with some useful thing after the
process of his or her research, then the subject matter comes under the protection of patent
under the patent system. However, it must be noted here that the laws related to the patent is
not universal in the whole world. There are different laws in different countries that governs the
subject matter of the patents, through that it is decided that whether the particular thing or the
subject matter is capable of the patent protection or not. Furthermore, it is the onus on the
inventor or the particular person who approaches before the appropriate authority to get the
patent protection that his or her invention is capable of getting protection under the applicable
laws that govern the patentability criteria of the particular subject. The laws regarding patent in
United States (hereinafter referred to as US) and Europe (hereinafter referred to as EU) is
entirely different. In US section 101 governs the patentability criteria, whereas in EU, Article 52
is related to the patents. European Patent Convention (EPC) provides that the applicant can
file only one application to get the protection under the patent system, prevalent in EU,
however it must be noted that the different countries in EU have their different laws regarding
the patent. Here, this could be mentioned that the different applicable laws in different
countries, itself is in contravention of the European Patent Convention (EPC).
Stefan WAGNER, September 2004, BUSINESS METHOD PATENTS IN EUROPE AND
THEIR STRATEGIC USE – EVIDENCE FROM FRANKING DEVICE MANUFACTURERS
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
120
http://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ecinnt/v17y2008i3p173-194.html
There has been a wide-spread misconception based on the imprecise wording of Art. 52 of the
European Patent Convention (EPC) that the protection of business methods by patents is
prohibited in Europe. This paper investigates the legal framework set by patent laws with
respect to the patentability of business methods, contrasting the situation in Europe and the
situation in the US. It is shown that in praxi business methods have never been excluded from
patentability in Europe. Further, 1,901 European patent applications relating to business
methods are found by identifying European equivalents to granted USPTO patents filed in US
Class 705 (i.e. business method patents). The computation of major patent indicators reveals
that European applications for business method patents differ from the average of all EPO
patent applications with respect to the number of claims, the number of references made and
the frequency of legal actions against granted patents. Additionally, a case study from the
franking device industry gives evidence of the strategic use of business method patents
leading to comparably high opposition rates against 44% of all granted patents.
26. Patent portfolios and venture capital investments
Carolin HAEUSSLER, Dietmar HARHOFF, Elisabeth MÜLLER, January 2009, TO BE
FINANCED OR NOT … - THE ROLE OF PATENTS FOR VENTURE CAPITAL FINANCING
http://ideas.repec.org/p/trf/wpaper/253.html
This paper investigates how patent applications and grants held by new ventures improve their
ability to attract venture capital (VC) financing. We argue that investors are faced with
considerable uncertainty and therefore rely on patents as signals when trying to assess the
prospects of potential portfolio companies. For a sample of VC-seeking German and British
biotechnology companies we have identified all patents filed at the European Patent Office
(EPO). Applying hazard rate analysis, we find that in the presence of patent applications, VC
financing occurs earlier. Our results also show that VCs pay attention to patent quality,
financing those ventures faster which later turn out to have high-quality patents. Patent
oppositions increase the likelihood of receiving VC, but ultimate grant decisions do not spur
VC financing, presumably because they are anticipated. Our empirical results and interviews
with VCs suggest that the process of patenting generates signals which help to overcome the
liabilities of newness faced by new ventures.
JESPER LINDGAARD CHRISTENSEN, 2008, THE IPR SYSTEM, VENTURE CAPITAL AND
CAPITAL MARKETS – CONTRIBUTIONS AND DISTORTIONS OF SMALL FIRM
INNOVATION?
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
121
http://ideas.repec.org/p/aal/abbswp/08-03.html
This study explores how capital markets, exemplified by venture capital, and recent trends in
the patent system may influence innovation activity and the financing of small businesses.
Specifically it is evaluated if there are costs and distortions of incentives related hereto.
Additionally, the positive contribution of venture capital in the patenting process is investigated.
It is found that trends at a macro economic level is nowadays of major importance for the
patenting and innovation behaviour and financing of firms. Patenting has increased in scale,
scope and trade volume, patents have become a strategic asset to an extent that may de-link
it from innovation activities. The IPR-system may render distortions of innovation activities
facilitated by these trends. These distortions may impose costs on the overall function of the
innovation system, costs that are unequally distributed among firms as small firms are bearing
most of the burdens.
The results points to new perspectives on strategy that are important to management of firms
and investment funds.
Mario W. CARDULLO, 2004, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY – THE BASIS FOR VENTURE
CAPITAL INVESTMENTS
http://www.wipo.int/sme/en/documents/venture_capital_investments.htm
While technology has been seen as one of the engines for the dramatic economic growth and
productivity the United States has experienced over the last several decades an underlying
factor has been the strength of the intellectual property developed during that period. It is the
intellectual property that provided the basis for investors to place their resources at risk.
Intellectual property is an integral part of value creation in a technology-based enterprise and
as such is a critical element in obtaining venture capital for SMEs. The appropriate use of the
intellectual property system is a powerful tool for competition, stability and mitigation of risks
on capital investments.
27. Patents filed for other motives than innovation
Angus C. CHU, Yuichi FURUKAWA, August 2010, ON THE OPTIMAL MIX OF PATENT
INSTRUMENTS
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/24039/
A special characteristic of the patent system is that it features multiple patent-policy levers that
can be employed by policymakers. In this study, we develop a quality-ladder model to analyze
the optimal mix of patent instruments. Specifically, we consider (a) patent breadth and (b) the
division of profit in research joint ventures. We analytically derive optimal patent policies and
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
122
then calibrate the model to quantitatively evaluate the welfare gain from optimizing both patent
instruments as compared to optimizing only one patent instrument. In summary, we find that
the welfare gain can be substantial.
Justus BARON, Henry DELCAMP, May 2010, STRATEGIC INPUTS INTO PATENT POOLS
http://hal-ensmp.archives-
ouvertes.fr/docs/00/48/82/72/PDF/BARON_DELCAMP_Strategic_Inputs_into_Patent_Pools_
CWP_2010-05.pdf
This article explores what factors determine the decision of a patent pool to accept new inputs.
We propose a dynamic analysis of 1337 U.S. patent inputs into 7 important pools. This
analysis highlights a trade-off between firm and patent characteristics as the determinants of
inclusion of patents into pools. For instance we prove that firms already member of the pool or
holding large patent portfolios are able to include lower quality patents. These findings can be
explained both by bargaining power and information asymmetry. In particular, as measured by
a new indicator, insiders and firms practicing the technology file patents that are better aligned
with the criteria of essentiality.
Dominique GUELLEC, Catalina MARTINEZ and Pluvia ZUNIGA, December 2009, PRE-
EMPTIVE PATENTING: SECURING MARKET EXCLUSION AND FREEDOM OF
OPERATION
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/20/22/44270098.pdf
We investigate statistically the characteristics, functioning and incidence of pre-emptive
patenting, defined as patent filings whose main effect is to hamper the grant of other patents.
Patent applications can be used to prevent the grant of exclusive rights on markets and
technologies to others in order to ensure freedom of operation to their holder or keep patent-
less competitors out of the market. Combining data from examination outcomes and prior art
at the European Patent Office (EPO), we develop a methodology to identify pre-emptive patent
applications. We find evidence of pre-emption associated to patent applications cited as
compromising patentability while being deemed non inventive. Furthermore, amongst them,
those which are withdrawn by the applicant have the strongest pre-emptive power. The
coincidence of low inventiveness and high pre-emptive impact supports the idea that some of
these patents may be strategically designed by their applicants to block patenting by others.
Patrick F.E. BESCHORNER, June 2009, DO SHORTER PRODUCT CYCLES INDUCE
PATENT THICKETS?
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewpaper.php?id=5511&cf=32
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
123
The traditional argument that shorter product cycles favor trade secret over patenting is
reviewed. A game theoretic model provides an argument that shorter product cycles can
induce firms to file more patent applications. The firms may be trapped in a prisoners' dilemma
where all firms would jointly prefer to patent less and to not have a patent thicket. If firms start
applying for patents on technologies which are not yet mature in order to cover ideas that may
eventually turn successful, this may create a patent thicket. The transition into a situation
where firms start patenting many ideas instead of single mature technologies is initiated and
accelerated when network effects are present or patents exhibit a blocking property.
Colleen V. CHIEN, April 2009, OF TROLLS, DAVIDS, GOLIATHS, AND KINGS:
NARRATIVES AND EVIDENCE IN THE LITIGATION OF HIGH-TECH PATENTS
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1396319
While each patent dispute is unique, most fit the profile of one of a limited number of patent
litigation stories. A dispute between an independent inventor and a large company, for
instance, is often cast in "David v. Goliath" terms. When two large companies fight over
patents, in contrast, they are said to be playing the "sport of kings." Some corporations engage
in "defensive patenting" in order to deter others from suing them. Patent licensing and
enforcement entities who sue have been labelled "trolls". Finally, observers of the patent
system call the use of patent litigation to impose or exploit financial distress "patent predation."
These stories, routinely invoked by the press, advocates, and academics, shape public
understanding of the patent system. In this Article, I describe, then match, these stories to data
on patent litigations to determine which types of suits are most prevalent. I focus exclusively
on the litigation of high-tech patents, covering hardware, software, and financial inventions,
using data from the Stanford Intellectual Property Clearinghouse for cases initiated in U.S.
District Courts from January 2000 through March 2008.
The data shows that the reality is more complicated than the rhetoric regarding patent
litigation. For instance, many blame nonpracticing entities (“NPEs”) for a majority of the
problems with the patent system. But they bring only a minority of patent suits: 17% of high-
tech patent suits in the last eight years. However, NPEs often name multiple defendants and
sometimes, rather than sue, are sued, for declaratory judgment (DJ). Counting suits based on
the number of defendants and including DJ cases, the NPE share rises to 28% of all high-tech
patent suits. This average reflects an increase in NPE suits as a proportion of all suits over an
eight-year period, from 22% in 2000-2001 to 36% from 2006 to March 2008, counting
defendants, or from 10% to 20%, counting cases. I also report the variation by industry based
on the absolute number of suits - the share of financial patent NPE suits (26%) was nearly
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
124
triple that of hardware patent NPE suits (9%). These numbers provide a richer context for
understanding the NPE phenomenon.
Another perception of the patent system is that large companies are reluctant litigants,
carefully constructing portfolios of patents to avoid going to court. The practice of "defensive
patenting" has been well-documented and theorized. Yet, I found that public and large private
companies initiated 42% of all lawsuits studied, 28% of the time against other large companies
- the largest single category. They also defend against many other suits, brought by NPEs,
small inventors, and individuals. These data suggest that defensive patenting, which is
supposed to keep large firms out of court, is at least an incomplete - and perhaps a failing -
strategy for many companies.
This Article also reports on the other major narratives of patent litigation. 4% of the suits were
initiated by individual inventors (David v. Goliath), 18% of the suits were brought by small
private companies against public or large private ones (small v. large), 16% pit one small- or
medium-sized company against another (limited stakes), and in 8% a large firm sued a small
one (predation profile). These and other findings provide a snapshot of patent litigation that
should both inform current efforts to reform the patent system and serve as a basis for further
investigation into its functioning
Joachim HENKEL, Florian JELL, April 2009, ALTERNATIVE MOTIVES TO FILE FOR
PATENTS: PROFITING FROM PENDENCY AND PUBLICATION
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1271242
Many patent applications lapse before they are reviewed by patent examiners. In this paper
we analyze how even a lapsed patent application yields benefits to the applicant. We argue
that these benefits are attributable to pendency and publication of patent applications. Based
on an analysis of all direct first filings at the German patent office between 1986 and 2000 we
find that more than 20% of all applications are left pending for the maximum of seven years
before examination is requested or the application is deemed to be withdrawn. Our findings,
which are supported by 25 interviews with inventors, indicate that firms keep patents pending
in order to gain time for evaluating if an exclusion right is worth its cost and to create insecurity
for competitors. Further 2% of all applications could turn out to have defensive publishing as
their sole purpose, that is, the publication of inventions with the purpose of creating prior art. In
this way, firms secure freedom to operate (FTO), which is a central precondition for
appropriating profits from own-used inventions. This finding gives an indication that, for all
other applications, the share of their value attributable to creating FTO might be considerable.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
125
Florian SCHUETT, March 2009, INVENTORS AND IMPOSTORS: AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
OF PATENT EXAMINATION, EUI ECO Working paper 2009/28
http://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/12051
The objective of patent examination is to separate the wheat from the chaff. Good applications
- those satisfying the patentability criteria, particularly novelty and nonobviousness - should be
accepted, while bad applications should be rejected. How should incentives for examiners be
designed to further this objective? This paper develops a theoretical model of patent
examination to address the question. It argues that examination can be described as a moral-
hazard problem followed by an adverse-selection problem: the examiner must be given
incentives to exert effort (looking for evidence to reject), but also to truthfully reveal the
evidence he finds (or lack thereof). The model can explain the puzzling compensation scheme
in use at the U.S. patent office, where examiners are essentially rewarded for granting patents,
as well as variation in compensation schemes across patent offices. It also has implications for
the retention of examiners and for administrative patent review.
Nicolas VAN ZEEBROECK, January 2009, FILING STRATEGIES AND THE INCREASING
DURATION OF PATENT APPLICATIONS
http://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/09-005.html
It has long been implicitly assumed that the roaring backlogs experienced by most patent
offices around the world – and harshly criticized by many patentees – are a mere mechanical
consequence of surging numbers of patent filings. However, different voices suggest that the
patent system may sometimes be gamed by an applicant in order precisely to delay the time
when a decision will be taken as to the patentability of his application. By empirically showing
the impact of several procedural options chosen by patentees in filing their applications at the
EPO, this paper clearly demonstrates that this possibility is real, and probably not anecdotal.
Deliberate or not, the main consequence of several procedural options is clearly to delay the
grant decision. Why and how firms could win any benefit from such strategies can only be
guessed, but whether such behaviours are legitimate or not, socially desirable or not, remains
an open question.
Joachim HENKEL, Markus G. REITZIG, September 2007, PATENT SHARKS AND THE
SUSTAINABILITY OF VALUE DESTRUCTION STRATEGIES
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=985602
Patent sharks (a.k.a. patent trolls) appropriate innovation rents by threatening to patent-block
other players' R&D-related value creation. Scholars have identified two inefficiencies in legal
practise (patentee-friendly injunctions and the granting of excessive damage awards) as
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
126
drivers of these 'destructive' strategies, suggesting that policy changes can suppress the shark
business in the future. Modelling interactions between sharks and manufacturers within a
biform game, we show formally that the shark problem is more subtle from a theoretical
managerial perspective and sustainable to policy changes in part. Patent extortion will remain
a viable strategy in technologically crowded industries when sharks choose patents on
inventions that (1) can be invented around rather easily before infringement, but (2) are
sufficiently sophisticated to be upheld in court and (3) create significant mid-term switching
costs for manufacturers after infringement. By presenting original data on all publicly reported
cases of patent shark attacks, we provide empirical indications a) that different sharking
strategies as predicted by theory exist in practise and b) that a significant share of professional
shark firms already pursue strategies that are likely to remain sustainable after legal changes.
We discuss implications for management theory in the area of innovation strategy and
business strategy more broadly.
Knut BLIND, Katrin CREMERS, Elisabeth MUELLER, January 2007, THE INFLUENCE OF
STRATEGIC PATENTING ON COMPANIES’ PATENT PORTFOLIOS
http://opus.zbw-kiel.de/volltexte/2007/5501/pdf/dp07013.pdf
This paper analyses whether strategic motives for patenting influence the characteristics of
companies’ patent portfolios. We use the number of citations and oppositions to represent
these characteristics. The investigation is based on survey and patent data from German
companies.
We find clear evidence that the companies’ patenting strategies explain the characteristics of
their patent portfolios. First, companies using patents to protect their technological knowledge
base receive a higher number of citations for their patents. Second, the motive of offensive –
but not of defensive – blocking is related to a higher incidence of oppositions, whereas
companies using patents as bartering chips in collaborations receive fewer oppositions to their
patents.
James F. MCDONOUGH III, January 2007, THE MYTH OF THE PATENT TROLL: AN
ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF THE FUNCTION OF PATENT DEALERS IN AN IDEA ECONOMY
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=959945&rec=1&srcabs=985602
A new breed of companies has emerged, and they are being called patent trolls. A patent troll
is a person or entity who acquires ownership of a patent without the intention of actually using
it to produce a product. Instead, it licenses the technology to an entity that will incorporate the
patent into a product, or it sues an entity it believes has already incorporated the technology in
a product without permission. The government, corporate America, and the media are
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
127
fervently acting against these trolls. New proposed legislation, a blizzard of Supreme Court
cases involving trolls, and endless newspaper and magazine articles are all trumpeting the
same story line: Patent trolls are bad for society and must be stopped.
This article suggests that patent trolls are actually good for the patent system. Patent trolls are
more accurately described as patent dealers because they act as market intermediaries in the
patent market. Once the activities of patent dealers are isolated from other distinct problems
that have been identified with the patent system, specifically the issuance of poor quality
patents and the problem of the patent thickets, it becomes clear that the emergence of patent
dealers marks a stage in the natural evolution of the patent market. Patent dealers make the
patent market more efficient by realigning market participant incentives, making patents more
liquid, and clearing the patent market. The article concludes by rebutting the common
complaints that patent trolls stunt innovation and spur unnecessary litigation.
28. Patents and developing countries
K. M. GOPAKUMAR, PRODUCT PATENTS AND ACCESS TO MEDICINES IN INDIA: A
CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TRIPS PATENT REGIME
http://www.bepress.com/ldr/vol3/iss2/art11
In 2005, India amended its Patents Act, 1970 to introduce TRIPS compliant product patent
regime. Generally speaking, law and policy makers in India during the time of the amendment
were confronted with two major concerns viz. the future of the Indian pharmaceutical industry
and access to affordable medicines in India and other developing countries. To address these
concerns India along with many other developing countries attempted to incorporate TRIPS
flexibilities in their domestic law. However, the success of the TRIPS flexibilities in addressing
the question of access to affordable medicines mainly depends on three factors: a) the
incorporation of flexibilities in the domestic law; b) the manufacturing capability of a country;
and c) the political will to use the public interest safeguards provided in the domestic law.
There are only a few countries like India, which satisfy the above-mentioned conditions to a
certain extent. This article examines whether these premises hold true after five years into the
implementation of the TRIPS compliant patent system in India. In this context the paper
identifies and analyzes the legal, policy and institutional challenges that India is currently
facing in the implementation of TRIPS flexibilities. It also identifies the main legal, policy and
institutional disconnect in the implementation of TRIPS flexibilities in India. It argues that to
effectively use TRIPS flexibilities to address access to affordable medicines require changes in
three areas viz. law, policy and institutions. It clearly shows that mere incorporation of TRIPS
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128
flexibilities in the domestic legislation alone is not enough and the domestic legislation needs
to be complemented with policy and institutional framework.
Belton M. FLEISHER, Mi ZHOU, January 2010, ARE PATENT LAWS HARMFUL TO
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES? EVIDENCE FROM CHINA
http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/pdf/fleisher/wp09-07.pdf
Has upgrading and enforcing its patent laws slowed China’s economic growth? The answer
we draw from detailed analysis of provincial aggregate data covering roughly the period 1990
through 2007 is strongly negative. An upper bound estimate is that the patent laws contributed
nearly two-thirds of China’s TFP growth over the period following adoption of the 1993 patent
law. A more plausible, difference-in-difference, estimate of the impact of the 1993 and 2001
patent laws is that in their absence China’s TFP growth over the period 1993-2007 would have
been marginally smaller after we control for the impacts of Deng Xiaoping’s “South Trip” and
China’s accession to WTO. The patent laws are estimated to have increased TFP growth
through increasing the rate of new technology embodied in physical capital and also through
intangible capital associated with FDI inflows. Virtually none of the laws’ impact on TFP growth
can be directly associated with increased R&D, although R&D is strongly positively correlated
with promulgation of the patent laws. The insignificant, or possibly negative, impact through
R&D may be due to inadequate GDP accounting for R&D expenditure in GDP and investment
accounts.
Belton M. FLEISHER, Mi ZHOU, August 2009, ARE PATENT LAWS HARMFUL TO
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES? EVIDENCE FROM CHINA
http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/pdf/fleisher/wp09-07.pdf
Has upgrading and enforcing its patent laws slowed China’s economic growth? The answer
we draw from detailed analysis of provincial aggregate data covering roughly the period 1990
through 2007 is strongly negative, but understanding the channels through which stricter
protection of intellectual property rights has contributed to more rapid productivity growth is
elusive. Our best estimate of the direct impact of the 1992 and 2001 patent laws on TFP
growth amounts to a significant share of the average TFP growth rate over the period, but we
cannot be sure that we have isolated the impact of the patent laws on TFP growth from those
of Deng’s famous “South Trip” and entry into WTO. We estimate that virtually none of the laws’
impact on TFP growth can be directly associated with increased quantity of FDI or R&D,
although both series are strongly positively correlated with promulgation of the patent laws.
We infer that amount of technology transfer through a FDI and the focus of R&D activity,
decline of state ownership and increased marketization, growth of the human capital stock,
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129
and movement of the labor force from agriculture to manufacturing and service industries are
all processes that were encouraged and whose effect has been magnified by stronger IPR
protection. Moreover, adopting and enforcing the patent laws probably cannot be treated as an
independent event with causation running in only one direction to China’s economic
development.
John H. BARTON, February 2008, PATENTING AND ACCESS TO CLEAN ENERGY
TECHNOLOGIES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
http://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2008/01/article_0003.html
In the pharmaceutical sector, patents often have a substantial impact on price, as there may
be no substitute for a specific new drug. In such circumstances, the patent holder is in a strong
market position and may be able to charge a price well above production cost. In contrast, in
the three renewable energy sectors considered here, solar photo-voltaic (PV), biomass and
wind, the basic technological solutions have long been off-patent. What are patented are
usually only specific improvements or features. Thus, a number of competing patented
products exist – and as a result of the competition, prices are brought down as compared to
the royalties and the price increases that would be charged under a monopoly. In addition,
there is competition not only between firms within a specific sector, but also between the
sectors and between other sources of fuel or electricity.
Christopher GARRISON, August 2006, EXCEPTIONS TO PATENT RIGHTS IN
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/iteipc200612_en.pdf
This Paper examines the principles and practice of “exceptions to patent rights”, especially as
regards developing countries.
Many WTO Members (“Members”) are convinced of the utility of the patent system in
encouraging research and development activity for new inventions. Many other Members are
less confident of the benefits of the patent system and indeed are concerned about the
dangers that the patent system poses, in terms of, for example, the impact that it and other
intellectual property rights systems will have on their economic and social welfare. Where the
line is drawn between those areas that are the preserve of the patent holder to control, and
those areas which the patent holder may not control, is therefore a very important policy
question for Members. The subject of this Paper relates to one aspect of this policy question,
that is to say, “exceptions to patent rights”, which for present purposes, is taken to mean
certain “safe harbour” areas of activity where the rights of a patent holder do not extend. Other
limitations of the rights of patent holders and other matters such as the scope of patentability
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130
of inventions or the compulsory licensing of patents are outside the scope of this Paper,
although they are touched on as and when appropriate.
This Paper is divided into four sections: Exceptions existing at the time of the TRIPS
Agreement, Exceptions under the TRIPS Agreement, State practice on exceptions under the
TRIPS Agreement and a Policy Process for considering new exceptions.
COMMISSION ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS, September 2002, Final Report,
chapter 6: Patent Reform
http://www.iprcommission.org/papers/pdfs/final_report/Ch6final.pdf
The heterogeneous nature of developing countries, especially in their technical and scientific
capacities, means that they need to choose an IP system which they feel best meets their
development objectives, and economic and social circumstances. The more technologically
advanced developing countries may wish to adopt systems that provide extensive patent
protection as incentives for R&D. On the other hand, they would also wish to avoid those
aspects of the system which could provide disincentives to R&D, or which could lead to
resources being diverted to litigation and disputes about patents of doubtful validity. Such
systems would need to have adequate safeguards to ensure a competitive environment, and
to minimise costs for consumers. This is especially important in those areas of technology
such as pharmaceuticals and agriculture where the cost of providing strong patent protection
is likely to be greatest.
For the vast majority of developing countries, especially those with low incomes which rely
principally on imported goods and technology, the best system might be one which applies
strict standards of patentability and results in fewer patents meeting the criteria for
patentability. This may be preferable to a more extensive system of protection, of benefit
principally to foreign patent holders. A second tier of protection based on a form of patents
known as utility models which offer protection based on lower thresholds of patentability, may
be more appropriate than the full patent system to the economic circumstances of many
developing countries.
Because much of the scientific and technological expertise in developing countries is
concentrated in the public sector, there will need to be careful consideration of the implications
of following developed countries in encouraging more patenting by research institutions and
universities. Developing countries need to consider the issues raised in developed countries
about the incentives and disincentives this offers in the application of technologies invented in
these institutions, and about how it might affect research priorities.
The patent rules applying in developed countries are also important since much research
relevant to developing countries may be carried out in developed countries, or in collaborative
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131
efforts with developed country researchers. Of particular concern are patents on tools
essential for research, for example particular gene sequences in the field of biotechnology. An
increase in patenting of such research tools in developed countries might hinder research
relevant to developing countries. Developing countries also need to avoid, as far as possible,
the same problems arising in their patent systems.
Developing countries already face formidable obstacles in implementing patent systems.
There is strong pressure to harmonise the international patent system in order to overcome
the problems faced, mainly in developed countries, in coping with the pressure of rapidly
growing patent applications. Because the system is essentially national or regional, there is
much apparent duplication of procedures, such as search and examination, which
harmonisation could eliminate. The danger for developing countries is that harmonisation
would be around developed country standards of protection, which may not be suitable for
them. For developing countries the concern must be to ensure that they do not accept in these
discussions new international rules further limiting their freedom to design appropriate patent
policies, unless it can be shown it is in their interests to do so.
• Developing countries should, within the constraints of international and bilateral obligations,
provide a pro-competitive patent system that limits the scope of subject matter that can be
patented; applies strict standards of patentability; facilitates competition; includes extensive
safeguards against abuses of patent rights; and encourages local innovation.
• Developing countries which provide patent protection for biotechnological inventions should
ensure that patenting guidelines are such that the use of patented inventions by other
researchers is limited as little as possible. For instance, if patents over genes are allowed, the
guidelines should provide that the patent only covers uses set out in the patent, not other uses
of the same invention which others may uncover. This will facilitate further research in the area
of the patent.
Policy makers in developing countries should consider the establishment of utility model
protection for stimulating and rewarding such innovations, rather than diluting patentability
standards. This should help to provide incentives for the incremental type of innovations that
predominate in many developing countries.
• Whilst there is a role for IP in developing countries’ public research institutions to promote the
transfer and application of technologies, it is important that:
- Generating alternative sources of funding is not seen as the principal goal, which is rather to
promote technology transfer.
- Care be taken to ensure that research priorities, particularly as regards the technology
requirements of the poor, be it in agriculture or health, are not distorted by the search for a
larger licensing income.
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132
- Patenting and licensing should only be undertaken where it is judged necessary to
encourage private sector development and the application of technologies.
- Careful consideration be given to the need to take out "defensive" patents on important
inventions, particularly for use as a bargaining tool where complementary technologies are
owned by private sector entities and cross-licensing may be required to access those
technologies.
- Getting the balance right requires the development of expertise in IP in public sector
institutions which traditionally have had none, without losing sight of the objectives of public
policy for research.
• It is important in developing initiatives aimed at facilitating access to essential research tools,
that attention continues to be paid to opportunities to improve patent systems, in both
developed and developing countries, to obviate some of the problems these initiatives are
seeking to address.
• Developing countries need to identify a strategy for dealing with the risk that further
harmonisation of patent laws internationally will lead to standards that do not take account of
their interests. Such a strategy might seek a global standard reflecting the recommendations
of this report. It could seek continued flexibility in the standards. Or it could be done by
rejection of the process if it appears that the outcome will not be in the interests of developing
countries.
Sivaramjani THAMBISETTY, September 2002, HUMAN GENOME PATENTS AND
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
http://www.iprcommission.org/papers/pdfs/study_papers/10_human_genome_patents.pdf
There is an international consensus among countries, reflected, among other things, in the
UNESCO Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, 1997, that human genome
sequence information should be freely available. This would ensure that important research is
carried on without restriction in developed countries as well as in those developing countries
with the means to do so. However, developments in patent law have meant that human gene
sequences are being patented, raising the spectre of restricted access to such information as
well as high prices of any useful products developed. There is a need to clarify what
information on the human genome is freely available, and to what extent national patent
systems should be allowed to impinge on the international consensus.
It is recommended that the relevance of the UNESCO Declaration on the Human Genome and
Human Rights be re-evaluated. The Declaration also states that the benefits derived from
knowledge about the human genome should be shared by all countries. Merely making the
genome sequence itself available freely on the internet for example, satisfies this principle only
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
133
in letter and not in spirit. The situation should be clarified with respect to industry expectations
of patent protection as well as developing country expectations about public health
improvement. It is recommended that gene sequences should remain pre-competitive
information so that greater quantum of research and analysis can be carried out in the post
genome sequence phase.
29. Patents, markets and companies
J. Patricio SAIZ, June 2010, WHY DID CORPORATIONS PATENT IN SPAIN? SOME
HISTORICAL INQUIRIES
http://www.uam.es/departamentos/economicas/analecon/especifica/mimeo2/wp_2010_02.pdf
In this paper we will explore how international corporations used the Spanish patent system in
the late nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century in order to discover
what the actual effects of its apparent weakness were. The origins and evolution of corporate
patenting in Spain, the effects of compulsory working clauses, the management of
assignments, the various strategies followed by the firms, and the effects of patents on
technology transfer to the Spanish economy will be clarified. The conclusions yields
understanding on real patent management in the long-term by analyzing the strategies of
Brown Boveri and Babcock Wilcox corporations in Spain.
Eskil ULLBERG, June 2010, THE PROBLEM OF TRADING PATENTS IN ORGANIZED
MARKETS: A DYNAMIC EXPERIMENTAL MICROECONOMIC SYSTEM MODEL AND
INFORMAL PRICE THEORY
http://cesis.abe.kth.se/documents/CESISWP229.pdf
We are well familiar with the economic analysis of a patent system in terms of a temporary
monopoly on products, benefitting from marginal process inventions, formulated under
conditions of certain future demands. This article develops an experimental and dynamic
microeconomic model useful for studying the patent system as a trade system, where
patented technology is exchanged in organized competitive markets, under uncertain future
demands. An economic system design is developed to study transparent prices of patents,
dynamic gains from using a patent in multiple industries and the coordination of invention,
intermediary and innovation activities using a linear contract on patents (fixed fee plus royalty
on revenues). A trader is introduced together with inventor and innovator agents in order to
multiply the value (use) of the technology. Three mechanism designs and two levels of
presumption of validity of the underlying patent right are proposed. The analysis differs from
previous work on patents, trade and economics in that the focus is on the competitive pricing
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134
of the rights themselves, using demand side bidding. An informal theory is outlined to price the
dual values of a patent (investing and blocking). Based on this proposition tentative hypothesis
are outlined for two initial experiments using the outlined economic system design.
William LAZONICK, Edward MARCH, April 2010, THE RISE AND DEMISE OF LUCENT
TECHNOLOGIES (unpublished)
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/22012/1/MPRA_paper_22012.pdf
We analyze the rise and demise of Lucent Technologies from the time that it was spun off from
AT&T in April 1996 to its merger with Alcatel in December 2006. The analysis, contained in the
three sections that form the body of this paper, considers three questions concerning Lucent’s
performance over the decade of its existence. 1. How was Lucent, with over $20 billion in
sales in 1995 as a division of AT&T, able to almost double its size by achieving a compound
growth rate of over 17 percent per year from 1995 to 1999? 2. What was the relationship
between Lucent’s growth strategy during the Internet boom and the company’s financial
difficulties in the Internet crash of 2001-2003 when the Lucent was on the brink of bankruptcy?
3. After extensive restructuring during the telecommunications industry downturn of 2001-
2003, why was Lucent unable to re-emerge as an innovative competitor in the communications
equipment industry when the industry recovered?
Elisabeth MÜLLER, Franz SCHWIEBACHER, January 2010, HOW COMPANIES USE
DIFFERENT FORMS OF IPR PROTECTION – ARE PATENTS AND TRADEMARKS
COMPLEMENTS OR SUBSTITUTES?
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewpaper.php?id=500648&cf=44
This paper investigates the question of whether patents and trademarks are complements or
substitutes. From a theoretical point of view both cases are possible. For some applications
the effectiveness of patent protection is weak, because competitors can invent around a
specific patent in a short period of time. If a company manages to build up ‘brand equity’ with
the help of trademarks, sales with relatively high margins may be sustained even if the
technological lead is lost. In addition, the concept of ‘brand equity’ refers (in part at least) also
to aspects of asymmetrical information. Thus, patents and trademarks may be mutually
reinforcing as trademarks reduce informational gaps between potential users and producers of
new inventions. This mechanism argues for a complementary use of both rights. In contrast,
some products will be especially amenable to patent protection whereas others will be more
suitable for trademark protection. A substitutive relationship between the two property rights is
therefore also possible. Besides the coverage of intellectual property rights in itself, uncertainty
regarding the quality and reliability of new inventions may also lead to a substitutive
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
135
relationship between patents and trademarks. The uncertainty inherent in new combinations of
technological knowledge may be diametral to the intangible, reputational assets embodied in a
trademark. Thus, complementary relationship between patents and trademarks should
diminished with the degree of novelty of the innovation.
The analysis is based on company information from the years 2005 to 2007 of the Mannheim
Innovation Panel (MIP). Information on around 1500 companies is used.
We test for the existence of complementarities using the methodology of Cassiman and
Veugelers (2006). From the adoption approach we learn that companies tend to use patents
and trademarks together, which is an indication for the two intellectual property rights being
complements. When looking at the success with innovations measured as the share of sales
with new products (productivity approach), our results suggest a substitutive relationship
between patents and trademarks. As next steps we investigate whether different IPR policies
are present in manufacturing versus service sectors...In addition, we analyze whether these
IPR policies are affected by degrees of novelty of patented inventions.
Gustav MARTINSSON and Hans LÖÖF, September 2009, INTERNAL FINANCE AND
PATENTS - EVIDENCE FROM FIRM-LEVEL DATA
http://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/cesisp/0194.html
We find that internal finance resources at the firm-level, measured by cash flow, play a non-
trivial role for the number of patent applications, even after controlling for the standard
variables of a patent study. The results are based on estimating panel count-data models on a
sample of 2,700 Swedish manufacturing firms, with observations from the period 1997-2005.
The cash-flow effect is larger during the aftermath of the bursting IT-bubble and for firms that
are more likely to be financially constrained. Our results suggest that some firms reduce or
stop applying for patents during periods of declining economic activity.
Diego LEGROS, February 2009, THE USE OF PROPERTY RIGHTS BY FRENCH FIRMS
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewpaper.php?id=5938&cf=32
In attempting to appropriate their innovations, firms can chose from a range of mechanisms,
including patents, trade secrets and lead-times. Yet, little is known about how firms choose
different appropriability mechanisms. The aim of this paper is to determine how the use of
intellectual property rights (IPRs) by French firms is related to their characteristics, activities,
competitive strategies and industry sector in which they operate. Among their characteristics,
we test the role of the human resource strategy. Our empirical model is based on French
Community Innovation Survey (CIS) in 2004. Our results show that the use of IPRs is
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
136
correlated with basic economic characteristics of firms, their activities and industry
environment.
Gaétan DE RASSENFOSSE and Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE DE LA POTTERIE, 2008,
ON THE PRICE ELASTICITY OF DEMAND FOR PATENTS
http://ideas.repec.org/p/eca/wpaper/2008_031.html
This paper investigates whether patent fee policies are a potential factor underlying the boom
in patent applications observed in major patent offices. We provide the first panel-based
evidence suggesting that fees affect the demand for patents in three major patent offices
(EPO, USPTO and JPO), with a price elasticity of about -0.4 (similar to that of the residential
demand for oil or water). The laxity of fee policies adopted by patent offices over the past 25
years therefore contributed, to a significant extent, to the rising propensity to patent observed
since the mid-nineties. This is especially true at the European Patent Office, which has
dramatically decreased its fees since the mid-1990s.
Katrin HUSSINGER, March 2005, IS SILENCE GOLDEN? PATENTS VERSUS SECRECY AT
THE FIRM LEVEL
http://ideas.repec.org/p/trf/wpaper/37.html
In the 1990s, patenting schemes changed in many respects: upcoming new technologies
accelerated the shift from price competition towards competition based on technical
inventions, a worldwide surge in patenting took place, and the 'patent thicket' arose as a
consequence of strategic patenting. This study analyzes the importance of patenting versus
secrecy as an effective alternative to protect intellectual property in the inventions' market
phase. The sales figure with new products is introduced as a new measure for the importance
of tools to protect IP among product innovating firms. Focusing on German manufacturing in
2000, it turns out that patents are important to protect intellectual property in the market,
whereas secrecy seems to be rather important for inventions that are not commercialized yet.
30. Patent families
Mendelson, Seth E., Miller, Barbara Hall, Poolman, Robert A. 2011 BLURRING THE LINE
BETWEEN BIOINFORMATICS AND PATENT ANALYSIS
HTTP://IDEAS.REPEC.ORG/A/EEE/WORPAT/V33Y2011I3P257-259.HTML
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
137
Biological patent analysts are often faced with querying multiple databases of sequence and
text. After retrieving the query results, the results must be analyzed by reviewing patents and
applications in a form of manual data reduction. Once families are identified for final analysis,
the analyst must expand back out, looking at the members of those patent families. Again,
sequence and text is reviewed manually, not algorithmically. One way for patent analysts to
reduce the number of repetitive tasks performed is through the creation of macros. Such
macros can be used for time-consuming tasks like global formatting, searching and replacing
within a document, formatting extracted sequences into FASTA, or even converting three-letter
amino acid code into single-letter code. Another way for a patent analyst to reduce repetitive
tasks in biosequence patent analysis is through an alliance between biological patent analysts
and bioinformaticians. Such an alliance could result in the development of tools that focus on
these types of repetitive tasks. A bioinformatician is skilled in looking for solutions to various
repetitive tasks. Such a solution could even be packaged and deployed to those colleagues
who would benefit from access to such a time-saving program. Finding a way to automate
repetitive tasks will free the patent analyst to spend more time on intellectual analysis of the
results.
Catalina MARTÍNEZ, February 2010, INSIGHT INTO DIFFERENT TYPES OF PATENT
FAMILIES
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5kml97dr6ptl-en
What are patent families? What is the impact of adopting one definition or another? Are some
definitions of patent families better suited than others for certain uses in statistical and
economic analysis?
The aim of this paper is to provide some answers to these questions, compare the
methodologies and outcomes of the most commonly used patent family definitions and provide
guidance on how to build families based on raw data from the EPO Worldwide Patent
Statistics database (PATSTAT). One of our findings, based on a characterisation of family
structures, is that extended patent families and other family definitions, such as equivalents
and single-priority families, provide identical outcomes for about 75% of the families with
earliest priority dates in the 1990s because they have quite simple structures. Differences
across definitions only become apparent for the families with more complex structures, which
represent 25% of the families of that period.
Peter HINGLEY and Walter G. PARK, July 2009, PATENT FAMILY DATA AND STATISTICS
AT THE EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE
http://w.american.edu/cas/economics/repec/amu/workingpapers/2009-08.pdf
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
138
At the European Patent Office (EPO) a comprehensive data file called PRI is maintained of
patent families. The file records are based on published patent documents, indexed by the
priority number of the first patent filing, with information on subsequent patenting activities for
that invention in the four major economic blocs: EPC contracting states, Japan, USA and
Others. It is possible to filter the data in order to highlight the most important inventions, for
example by selecting Trilateral patent families that lead to patenting activity in: EPC
contracting states (including EPO), Japan and USA.
The relationship between patent families and subsequent filings is not one-to-one. In order to
compare calculated figures from the EPO data set with an alternative system of consolidated
families, it is suggested that bounds may be calculable for numbers of consolidated families by
taking account of the overall numbers of network links between priority forming first filings and
subsequent filings. The key to this methodology is the identification of all the links between first
filings and subsequent filings in a family.
There is a timeliness problem caused by a considerable delay between the date of first filing
and the appearance of a publication that can index a patent family. A method is described by
which more up-to-date counts of families (numbers of priorities) can be made by augmenting
the database with information that is available in the distinct filings databases at the patent
offices.
The families data set can be used to investigate the patenting behaviour by individual
companies, industries, countries or economic blocs, or to study changing patterns of
technology in world-wide industrial research. Some representative data are presented over a
series of years that show increasing trends for the numbers of world-wide first filings, for
numbers of filings flowing from one country to another, for numbers of patent families making
use of the PCT system, and for the numbers of families within the EPC contracting states area
that make use of the EPO.
Good forecasts for numbers of patent filings at the EPO are needed for the purpose of internal
resource requirements planning. An initial attempt is described to set up an econometric model
for the development of subsequent filings at the EPO, based on patent families information
and on concomitant variables including source country R&D stock per worker and source
country GDP per capita. It may eventually be possible to generalise a successful model of this
type in order to predict filings flows to and from all the major patent offices.
John P. WALSH, Sadao NAGAOKA, July 2009, WHO INVENTS?: EVIDENCE FROM THE
JAPAN-US
http://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/09e034.pdf
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139
Human resources are increasingly seen as a key to innovation competitiveness, and there is a
need for detailed, systematic data on the demographics of inventors, their motivations, and
their careers. To gain systematic data on who invents, we collected detailed information on a
sample of inventors in the US and Japan (the RIETI-Georgia Tech inventor survey). The data
come from a unique set of matched surveys of US and Japanese inventors of triadic patents,
i.e., patents from patent families with granted patents in the US and applications filed in Japan
and in the EPO, with data from over 1900 responses from the US and over 3600 responses
from Japan. Based on these survey data, we compare the profiles, motivations, mobility and
performance of inventors in the US and Japan. Overall, we find some important similarities
between inventors in the US and Japan. The distribution across functional affiliations within the
firm, by gender, by educational fields and their motivations, are all quite similar. In particular, in
both countries we find inventors emphasizing task motivations over pecuniary motivations.
Firm-centered motivation (e.g., generating value for my firm) is also an important reason for
inventing and this reason is relatively more important in the US than Japan. Their distribution
across types of organizations is quite similar. The percent of university inventors is nearly the
same in the two countries, and the distribution of these inventors across technology classes is
also quite similar. However, the percent from very small firms is significantly higher in the US.
There are a few important differences. American inventors are much more likely to have a
PhD. American inventors are older (even controlling for differences in the share of the
inventors with PhDs). The modal Japanese inventor has his first invention in his 20s, while for
the US, the mode is the early 30s, and we also find many more American inventors over age
55 at the time of their triadic patent invention. In both countries, older inventors tend to
produce higher value patents. American inventors are also much more mobile (although
Japanese inventors with PhDs also have high rates of mobility, mainly in the form of
secondments). In the US, mobility tends to decline with age, while in Japan, mobility is higher
for older inventors (likely due to the differences in retirement ages in the two countries). In both
countries, mobility is associated with greater access to outside information. Finally, we find
that foreignborn inventors are very important in the US (we did not collect data on country of
origin for Japan). Overall, these results suggest that inventor characteristics may be important
for firm performance, and that institutional differences may affect the profile of inventors in
each country, although the inventors of the two countries are very similar in many respects.
Future work will examine how these cross-national differences in inventor profiles affect
innovation in each country.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
140
31. Patents and other topics
Angus C. CHU and Shin-Kun PENG, April 2010, INTERNATIONAL INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY RIGHTS: EFFECTS ON GROWTH, WELFARE AND INCOME INEQUALITY.
(Unpublished)
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/22253/1/MPRA_paper_22253.pdf
What are the effects of strengthening developing countries' protection for intellectual property
rights on economic growth, social welfare and income inequality in the global economy? To
analyze this question, we develop a two-country R&D-based growth model with wealth
heterogeneity. We find that the North experiences higher growth and welfare at the expense of
higher income inequality while the South experiences higher growth at the expense of lower
welfare and higher income inequality. As for global welfare, there exists a critical degree of
cross-country spillovers below (above) which global welfare decreases (increases). In light of
these findings, we discuss policy implications on China's accession to the World Trade
Organization in 2001.
Elisabetta OTTOZ, Franco CUGNO, February 2010, CHOOSING THE SCOPE OF TRADE
SECRET LAW WHEN SECRETS COMPLEMENT PATENTS
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/20672/1/MPRA_paper_20672.pdf
We present a model where an incumbent firm has a proprietary product whose technology
consists of at least two components, one of which is patented while the other is kept secret. At
the patent expiration date, an entrant firm will enter the market on the same technological
footing as the incumbent if it is successful in duplicating, at certain costs, the secret
component of the incumbent’s technology. Otherwise, it will enter the market with a production
cost disadvantage. We show that under some conditions a broad scope of trade secret law is
socially beneficial despite the innovator is over-rewarded.
Nicolas VAN ZEEBROECK July 2009, FROM PATENT RENEWALS TO APPLICATIONS
SURVIVAL: DO PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES PLAY A ROLE IN PATENT
LENGTH?
http://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/09-028.html
The decision of firms to renew their patents is largely assumed to be the result of a careful
valuation exercise to balance their expected revenues with renewal fees. This article extends
this line of reasoning to all patent applications filed to the EPO over a 20 years period and
analyzes with a survival time model the determinants of their maintenance throughout their life,
from filing to withdrawal, refusal or lapse. The results first show that the classical patent value
proxies (families, claims, IPC classes and forward citations) constitute strong predictors of the
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
141
entire length of patent rights and even more so before their grant than after, suggesting that
the length of an application, even non granted, is indicative of its expected private value to the
firm. They suggest that the IP management strategies of the firms aiming at building large
portfolios or families to protect their inventions make them less selective in their renewal
decisions. Finally, the results suggest that even the length of non granted applications (i.e. the
duration of their examination) is significantly influenced by factors relating to their scope and
importance and to the patenting strategy of the firms and is therefore partly in control of the
applicant, particularly through the PCT option and the filing of divisionals.
Valérie MERINDOL, Emmanuelle FORTUNE, July 2009, ANALYSE DES INFORMATIONS
DISPONIBLES DANS LA BASE PATSTAT, Rapport d'expertise, Observatoire des Sciences et
des Techniques (OST)
http://www.obs-ost.fr/fileadmin/medias/tx_ostdocuments/RapportOST-expertise-brevet_01.pdf
James E. BESSEN, Michael J. MEURER, Working Paper 09-18, April 2009, OF PATENTS
AND PROPERTY
http://www.bu.edu/law/faculty/scholarship/workingpapers/BessenJMeurerM.html
Do patents behave substantially like property rights in tangible assets, in that they encourage
development and innovation? This article notes that historical evidence, cross-country
evidence, economic experiments, and estimates of net benefits all indicate that general
property rights institutions have a substantial direct effect on economic growth. Conversely,
with a few important exceptions like chemicals and pharmaceuticals, empirical evidence
indicates that intellectual property rights have at best only a weak and indirect effect on
economic growth. Further, it appears that for public firms in most industries today, patents may
actually discourage investment in innovation for fear of winding up on the losing side of a
patent fight, and routine injunctive relief from patent protection may contribute to this problem.
Michael J. MEURER, Katherine J. STRANDBERG, Working Paper 09-17 April 2009, PATENT
CARROTS AND STICKS: A MODEL OF NONOBVIOUSNESS
http://www.bu.edu/law/faculty/scholarship/workingpapers/MeurerStrandbergCarrots.html
The authors develop an informal model of the impact of the nonobviousness standard on the
choice of research projects. Previous models assume that the basic question confronting a
researcher is, "Shall I produce this particular invention?" More realistically, the authors think a
researcher asks, "Which research path shall I pursue?" The model shows that a patent serves
as a carrot to induce the choice of more difficult projects than would be pursued under the no-
patent alternative. The nonobviousness standard serves as a stick to prod researchers to
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
142
choose even more difficult projects. The results of the model help us understand why a fact-
intensive issue like obviousness is a question of law. The model also helps us understand the
optimal relationship between the nonobviousness standard and patentable subject matter
exclusions. Commentators often suggest subject-matter exclusions are unnecessary if the
nonobviousness standard is used appropriately. The authors' model suggests this intuition is
wrong for inventions characterized by large social spillovers and high social costs of patenting;
a simple subject matter exclusion would be more efficient.
Malwina MEJER, Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE DE LA POTTERIE, January 2009,
ECONOMIC INCONGRUITIES IN THE EUROPEAN PATENT SYSTEM
http://www.ecares.org/
This paper argues that the consequences of the ‘fragmentation’ of the European patent
system are more dramatic than the mere prohibitive costs of maintaining a patent in force in
many jurisdictions. First, detailed analysis of judicial systems in several European countries
and four case studies provide evidence suggesting that heterogeneous national litigation
costs, practices and outcome induce a high level of uncertainty. Second, a high degree of
managerial complexity results from systemic incongruities due to easier ‘parallel imports’,
possible ‘time paradoxes’ and the de facto paradox of having EU-level competition policy and
granting authority ultimately facing national jurisdictional primacy on patent issues. These high
degrees of uncertainty and complexity contribute to reduce the effectiveness of the European
patent system and provide additional arguments in favour of the Community patent and a
centralized litigation in Europe.
Francesco LISSONI, Fabio MONTOBBIO, November 2008, INVENTORSHIP AND
AUTHORSHIP IN PATENT-PUBLICATION PAIRS: AN ENQUIRY INTO THE ECONOMICS
OF SCIENTIFIC CREDIT
http://www.cespri.unibocconi.it/
Authorship and inventorship are attribution rights that contribute to the reputation of individual
scientists, but have to be distributed across several individuals, due to the importance of
teamwork in both science and technology. For academic teams that both publish and patent
their research results, we can compare the social and legal norms that regulate the joint
distribution of these two types of attribution rights. We use text-mining techniques to identify
681 “patent-publication pairs” (related sets of patents and publications), for a sample of Italian
academic scientists. On average, the number of coauthors is larger than the number of co-
inventors, especially in medical-related fields. First and last authors have a lower probability of
being excluded from inventorship, as suggested by patent laws. However, the probability of
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exclusion also declines with seniority, as expected from social norms. Longlasting doubts on
the reliability of authorship as a tool for allocating scientific credit are reinforced, and can be
extended to inventorship.
EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE, JAPAN PATENT OFFICE, UNITED STATES PATENT AND
TRADEMARK OFFICE, October 2008, TRILATERAL STATISTICAL REPORT 2007 EDITION
http://www.trilateral.net
Collaboration between the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO), and
the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has proved to be successful in the
area of patent statistics. The three Offices, that are commonly referred to as the Trilateral
Offices in the patent community, have once again jointly produced the Trilateral Statistical
Report (TSR). This is an annual compilation of patent statistics. In addition to promoting a
better understanding of the importance of patent rights in the world, the report explains each
Office’s operations and informs generally about patent grant procedures. In order to do this,
the report discusses background activities at each Office, reviews worldwide patenting
activities and then compares the patent related work at the Trilateral Offices. The TSR
supplements annual reports for each of the three Offices and also uses statistics that are
collected by the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Fiona MURRAY, Scott STERN, September 2008, LEARNING TO LIVE WITH PATENTS:
ACQUIESCENCE & ADAPTATION TO THE LAW BY THE LIFE SCIENCES COMMUNITY
http://www3.druid.dk/wp/20080023.pdf
Scholarly studies of how the law affects knowledge work tend to fall between two extreme
views. Economists, as well as legal and policy scholars, debate how changes in legal
institutions, particularly in expanding property rights, shape the daily lives of knowledge
workers. In contrast, ethnographies of knowledge work usually fail to highlight lawyers as key
actors. The current study reconciles these views, arguing that in response to changing legal
institutions, knowledge communities engage in both costly acquiescence and adaptation to the
law. This perspective suggests that while the law may cause significant disruption to
knowledge communities, through their adaptation the law becomes commonplace and
unremarkable. Our study measures these processes by tracing how changes in the
enforcement of intellectual property rights shape patterns of knowledge exchange and
accumulation within knowledge communities. Specifically, we conduct a large-scale
quantitative analysis of publications and patents drawn from a period characterized by
dynamic changes in property rights enforcement, assessing how enforcing intellectual property
rights over scientific knowledge influences the life sciences community. Our analysis reveals
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
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that initially, IP engenders costly acquiescence on the part of academic scientists, reducing
their level of knowledge exchange. Over time, however, adaptation exerts an even larger
influence, facilitating exchange even in the presence of IP rights. Consequently, the long-term
impact of patent law reflects a balancing act between the processes of acquiescence and
adaptation. More broadly, our work suggests that legal institutions play an important, though
subtle, role in the structure and practices of knowledge communities and knowledge work.
Angus C. CHU, August 2008, EFFECTS OF PATENT POLICY ON INCOME AND
CONSUMPTION INEQUALITY IN AN R&D-GROWTH MODEL
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10168/
What are the effects of strengthening patent protection on income and consumption
inequality? To analyze this question, this paper incorporates heterogeneity in the initial wealth
of households into a canonical quality-ladder growth model with endogenous labor supply. In
this model, I firstly show that the aggregate economy always jumps immediately to a unique
and stable balanced-growth path. Given the balanced-growth behavior of the aggregate
economy and an exogenous distribution of initial wealth, I then show that the endogenous
distribution of assets in subsequent periods is stationary and equal to its initial distribution. The
model predicts that strengthening patent protection increases (a) economic growth by
stimulating R&D investment and (b) income inequality by raising the return on assets.
However, whether it also increases consumption inequality depends on the elasticity of
intertemporal substitution. If and only if this elasticity is less (greater) than unity, strengthening
patent protection increases (decreases) consumption inequality. For standard parameter
values, strengthening patent protection leads to a larger increase in income inequality than
consumption inequality.
Nicolas VAN ZEEBROECK, June 2008, DEVELOPPEMENT ET IMPACT DES STRATEGIES
DE DEPOT DE BREVETS
http://www.cairn.info/resume.php?ID_ARTICLE=RPVE_473_0087
This article proposes an analysis of the evolution and determinants of patent filing strategies
and their impact on the patent system. Its motivation resides in the evolution of practices
(patent drafting and filing) over the past 20 years, characterized by a surge in the number and
size of patent applications. These developments could compromise the ability of the patent
system to fulfill its economic purpose of incentive to innovate, as the inflation in number and
size of applications induce considerable backlogs and delays. Based on a unique database
and different econometric models, this paper first analyses the drivers of this evolution, notably
the international diffusion of practices, the growing complexity of inventions, emerging
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technological sectors, and the building of large patent portfolios. The association of these
developing strategies with patent value is then investigated based on traditional indicators and
a new composite index of patent value. Finally, a more thorough analysis of the patent length
confirms that these strategies are strongly associated with patent value, but mostly reveal that
their main effect is to slow down the examination process, resulting into legal uncertainty in the
patent system and raising several policy implications.
Nicolas VAN ZEEBROECK, June 2008, LONG LIVE PATENTS: THE INCREASING LIFE
EXPECTANCY OF PATENT APPLICATIONS AND ITS DETERMINANTS
http://ideas.repec.org/a/pia/review/v2y2011i3n5.html
Relying on a comprehensive dataset including detailed information on all patent applications
filed to the EPO from 1980 to 2000 and on the renewal of those of them that were granted, this
paper presents the first survival time analysis of the determinants of patent length. The results
are threefold: first, they clearly establish that the life expectancy of patent rights has
significantly increased over the past decades despite a small decline in the average grant rate.
Second, they show that some filing strategies strongly influence the length of patents, possibly
due to induced delays in the examination process. And third, they confirm that more valuable
patents (more cited or covering a larger geographical scope) tend to live longer.
INPI - Observatoire de la Propriété Intellectuelle, 2008, ENQUETE SUR LA REMUNERATION
DES INVENTEURS SALARIES
http://www.inpi.fr/fr/l-inpi/observatoire-de-la-propriete-intellectuelle/etudes-recentes-de-l-
observatoire.html
Ce dossier présente un état des lieux actualisé et public des pratiques des entreprises
françaises en matière de rémunération de leurs inventeurs salariés. Il repose essentiellement
sur une enquête par questionnaire effectuée en 2008, par l’Observatoire, auprès de plus de
280 entreprises. 88 réponses ont été reçues (profils variés en termes de tailles et de domaines
d’activité), dont les résultats sont présentés ici.
Plus que la représentativité statistique, l’enquête effectuée par l’Observatoire auprès des
entreprises vise l’exemplarité : les résultats pourront servir de référentiel aux entreprises qui
souhaitent adopter ou mettre à jour un tel système.
Le droit français distingue 3 types d’inventions de salariés :
− L’invention de mission s’entend soit comme invention réalisée dans le cadre du contrat de
travail impliquant une mission inventive, soit comme invention réalisée par un salarié qui s’est
vu confier de manière expresse une mission d’études ou de recherche. Elle appartient à
l’employeur.
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− Une invention hors mission est attribuable à l’employeur si elle a été réalisée au cours de
l’exercice des fonctions du salarié ou dans le domaine ou avec les moyens de l’entreprise. Elle
appartient à l’employeur.
− Par défaut, une invention qui n’entre pas dans les catégories précédentes est une invention
hors mission non attribuable : le salarié a conçu une invention hors de ses missions et du
domaine d’activité de l’entreprise. L’invention appartient au salarié. Tout salarié qui réalise une
invention a l’obligation d’en faire déclaration à son employeur.
Cette obligation concerne tous les salariés et toutes les inventions, qu’il s’agisse d’une
invention de mission ou hors mission. Le salarié doit déclarer son invention à son employeur
en lui proposant un classement, c’est-à-dire la catégorie dans laquelle il classe son invention.
Elisabetta OTTOZ, Franco CUGNO, October 2007, PATENT-SECRET MIX IN COMPLEX
PRODUCT FIRMS
http://www.de.unito.it/web/member/segreteria/WP/2007/7_WP_Ottoz_Cugno.pdf
Different protection mechanisms may be employed at the same time for a given innovation
when the innovation is comprised of separately protectable components. If patents and trade
secrets can be mixed in protecting single innovations, a strengthening in patent breadth may
induce a lower level of patenting, as innovators are more prone to rely on secrecy.
Douglas LICHTMAN, Mark A. LEMLEY, August 2007, RETHINKING PATENT LAW'S
PRESUMPTION OF VALIDITY
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=963996&rec=1&srcabs=1012726
The United States Patent and Trademark Office is tasked with the job of reading patent
applications and determining which ones qualify for patent protection. It is a Herculean task,
and the Patent Office pursues it subject to enormous informational and budgetary constraints.
Nonetheless, under current law, courts are bound to defer to the Patent Office's decisions
regarding patent validity. In this Article, we argue for reform. Deference to previous decision-
makers is appropriate in instances where those previous decisions have a high likelihood of
accuracy, and the patent system should endeavor to create processes that fit this mold. But
granting significant deference to the initial process of patent review is indefensible and
counter-productive. Patents should be vulnerable to challenge until and unless they are
significantly evaluated in an information-rich environment. At that point, they will have earned
and therefore should be accorded a presumption of validity. Such an approach would better
serve the patent's systems long-run incentive goals, and it would give patent applicants better
incentives to file for genuine inventions but leave their more obvious and incremental
accomplishments outside the patent system's purview. Here, we therefore suggest the
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creation of a two-tier system of patent validity, with patents that are subject to intensive
scrutiny accorded a strong presumption of validity, while untested patents are left to be
evaluated more fully in court.
Dietmar HARHOFF, Bronwyn H. HALL, Georg VON GRAEVENITZ, Karin HOISL, Stefan
WAGNER, July 2007, THE STRATEGIC USE OF PATENTS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR
ENTERPRISE AND COMPETITION POLICIES
Alfonso GAMBARDELLA, Paola GIURI, CASE STUDY: EVIDENCE ON STRATEGIC
PATENTING BY USING THE PATVAL -EU SURVEY
http://www.inno-tec.bwl.uni-
muenchen.de/forschung/forschungsprojekte/laufendeprojekte/index.html
This report was commissioned as a study into the strategic use of patents. In the course of its
case investigations and legislative reviews the European Commission became aware of
changes in the use of intellectual property, in particular the use of patents. It was noted that
firms’ uses of intellectual property are becoming increasingly strategic. This raised concerns
about the implications of firms’ patenting behaviour for enterprise and competition policy. The
following report contains a comprehensive review of patenting behaviour, the extent to which
patenting is becoming more strategic and the implications this has for competition and
enterprise policies. A surge in patent applications, “a patenting explosion”, has been observed
at the European Patent Office (E.P.O.) as well as at the patent office for the United States of
America (U.S.P.T.O) and other patent offices world wide. Firms’ patenting behaviour has
changed in several industrial sectors. Most of these sectors draw on complex technologies.
This means that final products embody a combination of a large number of patented
technological advances. Most often a single firm does not possess all patents relevant to a
final product. Strategic behaviour by rival firms supplying the same final product markets
ensues: patent portfolios may need to be licensed, patents may be used to block rivals use of
technology or to extract concessions. Strategic uses of patent portfolios are a new
phenomenon flowing from the increased complexity of modern technology. Previously small
patent portfolios could be used to protect an entire technology. Mobile telephony provides an
example for the recent trend: the technical standards on which this technology is based
contain hundreds of patents. These patents are owned by many different firms. Ongoing
competition cases in this industry demonstrate the potential for strategic behaviour.
Mario CIMOLI and Annalisa PRIMI, May 2007, TECHNOLOGY AND INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY: A TAXONOMY OF CONTEMPORARY MARKETS FOR KNOWLEDGE AND
THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
148
http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/files/2008-06.pdf
This paper aims to contribute to frame the IP for development debate into a more extensive
discussion on appropriability, within the perspective of policies shaping scientific, technological
and production capabilities in the light of development theory. Through the lenses of the
paradigm based theory of innovation, the authors first recognize that technological
asymmetries and gaps between firms and countries appear more as sticky features than as
transitory stages of (automatic) adjustment processes, thus reassessing the appropriability ad
disclosure function of patents. Then, the paper presents a taxonomy of contemporary markets
for knowledge, flagging the existence of what we call derivative markets for knowledge.
Patents become to a certain extent liquid because they loose the weight and the density of the
technological component and they can easily circulate in the market without having
necessarily to be entangled in any final artifact. Just as in derivative financial markets, the
value of patents is a function of expectations regarding their uncertain potential future value.
The paper concludes sketching the implications for development focusing on two major issues:
i) how reassessing the role of IP through an evolutionary perspective affects behavioral
microfoundations of innovative conducts and ii) how asymmetries in technological and
production capacities between countries mould patenting behavior and participation and
exclusion in the contemporary markets for knowledge.
Cédric SCHNEIDER, April 2007, THE DETERMINANTS OF PATENT APPLICATIONS
OUTCOMES - DOES EXPERIENCE MATTER?
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/8625/1/MPRA_paper_8625.pdf
The aim of this paper is to study the determinants of the outcomes of patent applications
(withdrawal, refusal or grant). The application process at the European Patent Office is
modelled in three stages, using a Trivariate Probit model with double selectivity correction in
order to test whether the applicants’ patenting history has an effect on the outcome of the
current application. I investigate the behavior of the applicant after the patent office has
established the "state of the art", a precondition to an invention being patentable. The main
results are (i) firms with large patents portfolios act following a "trial and error" strategy, by
applying for large numbers of patents and thereafter waiting for the patent office’s final
decision when the expected probability of grant is high, (ii) the technological importance of a
patent is a crucial determinant of a successful application grant, (iii) a withdrawal is to be
regarded as an expected refusal, since applicants tend to withdraw their applications when
there is evidence that the inventions cannot be considered to be novel or to involve an
inventive step.
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149
Dirk CZARNITZKI, Wolfgang GLÄNZEL, Katrin HUSSINGER, April 2007, HETEROGENEITY
OF PATENTING ACTIVITY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH,
Discussion Paper No. 07-028
http://opus.zbw-kiel.de/volltexte/2007/5687/pdf/dp07028.pdf
The increasing commercialization of university discoveries has initiated a controversy on the
impacts for future scientific research. It has been argued that an increasing orientation towards
commercialization may have a negative impact on more fundamental research efforts in
science. Several scholars have therefore analyzed the relationship between publication and
patenting activity of university researchers, and most articles report positive correlations.
However, most studies do not account for heterogeneity of patenting activities ranging from
university patents to corporate patents. While the former may have closer links to basic
research, this is not what we expect from the latter. We argue that such efforts will indeed
distract scientists from other activities, as collaborations with companies are usually assumed
to have an applied character and do not necessarily coincide with basic research tasks. This
paper investigates the incidence of patenting and publishing distinguishing between different
types of patents for a large sample of professors active in Germany. Our results show that,
while university patents as well as patents assigned to not-for-profit institutions complement
publication quantity and quality, corporate patents yield negative effects.
Francesco LISSONI, Patrick LLERENA, Maureen MCKELVEY, Bulat SANDITOV, 2007,
ACADEMIC PATENTING IN EUROPE: NEW EVIDENCE FROM THE KEINS DATABASE
ftp://ftp.unibocconi.it/pub/RePEc/cri/papers/WP202LissoniLlerenaMcKelveySanditov.pdf
The paper provides summary statistics from the KEINS database on academic patenting in
France, Italy, and Sweden. It shows that academic scientists in those countries have signed
many more patents than previously estimated. This re-evaluation of academic patenting
comes by considering all patents signed by academic scientists active in 2004, both those
assigned to universities and the many more held by business companies, governmental
organizations, and public laboratories. Specific institutional features of the university and
research systems in the three countries contribute to explain these ownership patterns, which
are remarkably different from those observed in the US. In the light of these new data,
European universities’ contribution to domestic patenting appears not to be much less intense
than that of their US counterparts.
Nicolas VAN ZEEBROECK, October 2007, preliminary version, PATENTS ONLY LIVE
TWICE: A PATENT SURVIVAL ANALYSIS IN EUROPE
http://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/07-028.html
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
150
The length of patent rights is an issue of considerable importance in the design of patent
systems, and its optimality has been intensively discussed in the literature. This dimension –
taking the form of the number of years during which a given patent has been maintained – has
been considered in the empirical literature as a direct indication of the private value of patents.
But the lack of comprehensive data on both the renewal of patents and their characteristics
has prevented so far any systematic analysis of the determinants of this duration. Relying on a
comprehensive dataset including detailed information on all patent applications filed to the
European Patent Office from 1980 to 2000 and on the renewal of those of them that were
granted, this paper presents a survival time analysis of the determinants of patent length in
Europe. The results are threefold: first, they clearly establish that patent rights have
significantly increased in length over the past decades despite a small decline in the average
grant rate, and due to the dilatation of the examination process and higher maintenance rates.
Second, they show that some filing strategies induce considerable delays in the examination
process, possibly to the benefits of the patentee, but most certainly to the expense of legal
uncertainty on the markets and undue exploitation of the provisional protection granted to
pending applications by the European Patent Convention. And third, they confirm that more
valuable patents (more cited or covering a larger geographical scope) take more time to be
processed and live longer, whereas more complex applications are associated with longer
decision lags but also with lower grant and renewal rates. These results have many policy
implications for technology markets, patent systems and all their stakeholders.
Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE DE LA POTTERIE and Nicolas VAN ZEEBROECK, 2007, A
BRIEF HISTORY OF SPACE AND TIME: THE SCOPE-YEAR VALUE INDICATOR BASED
ON FAMILIES AND RENEWALS
http://www.mendeley.com/research/a-brief-history-of-space-and-time-the-scopeyear-index-as-
a-patent-value-indicator-based-on-families-and-renewals/
The renewal of patents and their geographical scope for protection constitute two essential
dimensions in a patent’s life, and probably the most frequently used patent value indicators.
The intertwining of these dimensions (the geographical scope of protection may vary over
time) makes their analysis complex, as any measure along one dimension requires an
arbitrary choice on the second. This paper proposes a new indicator of patent value, the
Scope-Year index, combining the two dimensions. The index is computed for patents filed at
the EPO from 1980 to 1996 and validated in its member states. It shows that the average
value of patent filings has increased in the early eighties but has constantly decreased from
the mid-eighties until the mid nineties, despite the institutional expansion of the EPO. This
result sheds a new and worrying light on the worldwide boom in patent filings.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
151
George LAZARIDIS and Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE DE LA POTTERIE, 2007, THE
RIGOUR OF EPO'S PATENTABILITY CRITERIA: AN INSIGHT INTO THE "INDUCED
WITHDRAWALS"
http://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/07-007.html
The EPO traditionally grants at least 60% of all patent applications, the rest being either
withdrawn (30-35 %) or refused (5%). This paper provides quantitative evidence suggesting
that up to 54% of all patent withdrawals could be considered as induced by the work of EPO
examiners, and hence may be taken as a more appropriate indicator of the rigour of the EPO.
“Induced withdrawals” and refusals occur for up to 23% of all applications at the EPO. This
share varies according to 1) the route chosen for an EPO filing; 2) the technological field that
is considered; and 3) the country of residence of the assignee. The number of claims only
slightly affects the share of withdrawals. However, on average, two additional claims induce an
additional communication from the EPO, which in turn prolongs the procedural duration by an
additional year.
Bart VAN LOOY, Mariëtte DU PLESSIS, Tom MAGERMAN, November 2006, DATA
PRODUCTION METHODS FOR HAMONIZED PATENT STATISTICS: PATENTEE SECTOR
ALLOCATION, KUL Working Paper No. MSI 0606
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID944464_code444941.pdf?abstractid=94446
4
Patent documents are one of the most comprehensive data sources on technology
development. As such, they provide a unique source of information to analyze and monitor
technological performance. Patent indicators are now used by companies and by policy and
government agencies alike to assess technological progress on the level of regions, countries,
domains, and even specific entities such as companies, universities and individual inventors.
In this paper, we develop an exhaustive sector assignment taxonomy to identifying whether
patentees are companies (private business enterprise), universities and higher education
institutions, or governmental agencies. The methodology that we have developed will be
outlined and made fully transparent. It will be shown that the methodology proposed is
effective both in terms of completeness (over 99% of the patent volume of both USPTO and
EPO are assigned to discrete categories) and accuracy (99% of the assigned codes reflect the
category correctly). At the same time, further improvements are considered both feasible and
relevant. In order to ensure that such improvements are put into effect, EUROSTAT and its
development partners (K. U. Leuven and SOGETI) have deliberately chosen to put the
methodology into the public domain. This action is, in effect, an invitation to researchers and
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
152
analysts to further build on the methodology and to improve it where feasible. When informed
about such improvements, EUROSTAT and its partners will ensure that updates and
refinements of the methodology as a whole are made available to the wider public.
Stuart J.H. GRAHAM, Dietmar HARHOFF, April 2006, CAN POST-GRANT REVIEWS
IMPROVE PATENT SYSTEM DESIGN? A TWIN STUDY OF US AND EUROPEAN PATENTS
http://ideas.repec.org/p/trf/wpaper/38.html
This paper assesses the impact of adopting a post-grant review institution in the US patent
system by comparing the “opposition careers” of European Patent Office (EPO) equivalents of
litigated US patents to those of a control group of EPO patents. We demonstrate several novel
methods of "twinning" US and European patents and investigate the implications of employing
these different methods in our data analysis. We find that EPO equivalents of US litigated
patent applications are more likely to be awarded EPO patent protection than are equivalents
of unlitigated patents, and the opposition rate for EPO equivalents of US litigated patents is
about three times higher than for equivalents of unlitigated patents. Patents attacked under
European opposition are shown to be either revoked completely or narrowed in about 70
percent of all cases. For EPO equivalents of US litigated patents, the appeal rate against
opposition outcomes is considerably higher than for control-group patents. Based on our
estimates, we calculate a range of net welfare benefits that would accrue from adopting a
post-grant review system. Our results provide strong evidence that the United States could
benefit substantially from adopting an administrative post-grant patent review, provided that
the post-grant mechanism is not too costly.
Eugenio ARCHONTOPOULOS, Dominique GUELLEC, Niels STEVNSBORG, Bruno VAN
POTTELSBERGHE DE LA POTTERIE, Nicolas VAN ZEEBROECK, 2006, WHEN SMALL IS
BEAUTIFUL: MEASURING THE EVOLUTION AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE
VOLUMINOSITY OF PATENT APPLICATIONS AT THE EPO
http://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/06-019.html
The joint increase in the number and size of patents filed around the world puts patent
systems under pressure. This paper addresses issues in measuring the voluminosity of patent
applications and highlights several patterns in its evolution. The results – based on a 2 million
EPO applications database – show that the average size of applications has doubled over the
past 20 years and that it is mainly associated with PCT applications having a US priority.
Voluminosity indicators are also influenced by geographical origins, technological areas, and
various measures of complexity. They strongly impact the workload of the EPO, justifying the
need for regulatory and policy actions.
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
153
Rainer FRIETSCH, PATENTE IN EUROPA UND DER TRIADE - STRUKTUREN UND
DEREN VERÄNDERUNG - STUDIEN ZUM DEUTSCHEN INNOVATIONSSYSTEM NR. 12-
2006
http://www.bmbf.de/pubRD/sdi-09-07.pdf
Mark A. LEMLEY, Douglas LICHTMAN, Bhaven N. SAMPAT, December 2005, WHAT TO DO
ABOUT BAD PATENTS
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=869826
At the time patent applications are reviewed, the Patent and Trademark Office has no way of
identifying the small number of applications that are likely to end up having real economic
significance. Thus patent applications are for the most part treated alike, with every application
getting the same - and by necessity sparse - review. In this short magazine piece, we urge in
response three basic reforms. First, we would weaken the presumption of validity that today
attaches to all issued patents. The modern strong presumption simply does not reflect the
reality of patent review; presumptions, in short, should be earned. Second, because legitimate
inventors need as much certainty as the law can provide, we would give applicants the option
of earning a presumption of validity by paying for a thorough examination of their inventions.
Put differently, applicants should be allowed to "gold-plate" their patents by paying for the kind
of searching review that would merit a strong presumption of validity. Third and finally,
because competitors also have useful information about which patents worry them and which
do not, we support instituting a post-grant opposition system, a process by which parties other
than the applicant would have the opportunity to request and fund a thorough examination of a
recently issued patent. As we explain in the piece, these reforms would together allow the
Patent Office to focus its resources on patents that might actually matter, and it would also
both reduce the incentive to file patents of questionable validity and reduce the harm caused
by such patents in any event.
Bronwyn H. HALL and Dietmar HARHOFF, 2004, POST-GRANT REVIEWS IN THE U.S.
PATENT SYSTEM–DESIGN CHOICES AND EXPECTED IMPACT
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/papers/HallHarhoff04BTLJ.pdf
Several policy review boards have advocated the introduction of post-grant patent review
mechanisms in the U.S patent system. We discuss to what extent “patent quality” has been
deteriorating in the U.S. patent system and then consider the expected impact of post-grant
review mechanisms as advocated by the policy review boards. We take a detailed look at the
experience with the opposition mechanism at the European Patent Office. Our results indicate
Eurostat quarterly review of literature on patent statistics
154
that a properly designed U.S. post-grant review could generate high welfare gains. We discuss
the design choices faced by policy-makers in the United States and provide recommendations.
Wesley M. COHEN, February 2002, PATENTS: THEIR EFFECTIVENESS AND ROLE
http://www.ftc.gov/opp/intellect/cohen.pdf
Powerpoint presentation
THE BRITISH LIBRARY'S PATENT COLLECTION
http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpsubject/busmanlaw/ip/ippatents/patents.html
32. Technology transfer: Public research – Industry
Antoine DECHEZLEPRETRE, Matthieu GLACHANT, Yann MENIERE, February 2009.
TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER BY CDM PROJECTS: A COMPARISON OF BRAZIL, CHINA,
INDIA AND MEXICO, ENERGY POLICY, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 703-711.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V2W-4V1MFK4-
3/2/90e37ef2f146e28be54e37b3d8b8186f
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In a companion paper [Dechezleprêtre, A., Glachant, M., Ménière, Y., 2008. The Clean
Development Mechanism and the international diffusion of technologies: An empirical study,
Energy Policy 36, 1273-1283], we gave a general description of technology transfers by Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM) projects and we analyzed their drivers. In this paper, we use
the same data and similar econometric models to explain inter-country differences. We focus
on 4 countries gathering about 75% of the CDM projects: Brazil, China, India and Mexico.
Sixty eight percent of Mexican projects include an international transfer of technology. The
rates are, respectively, 12%, 40% and 59% for India, Brazil and China. Our results show that
transfers to Mexico and Brazil are mainly related to the strong involvement of foreign partners
and good technological capabilities. Besides a relative advantage with respect to these
factors, the higher rate of international transfers in Mexico seems to be due to a sector-
composition effect. The involvement of foreign partners is less frequent in India and China,
where investment opportunities generated by fast growing economies seem to play a more
important role in facilitating international technology transfers through the CDM. International
transfers are also related to strong technology capabilities in China. In contrast, the lower rate
of international transfer (12%) in India may be due to a better capability to diffuse domestic
technologies.
Antoine DECHEZLEPRETRE, Matthieu GLACHANT, Yann MENIERE, April 2008.
THE CLEAN DEVELOPMENT MECHANISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL DIFFUSION OF
TECHNOLOGIES : AN EMPRICAL STUDY
http://www.feem.it/userfiles/attach/Publication/NDL2007/NDL2007-105.pdf
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is expected to stimulate the North-South transfer
of climate-friendly technologies. This paper provides an assessment of the technology
transfers that take place through the CDM using a data set of 644 registered projects. It
provides a detailed description of the transfers (frequency, type, by sector, by host country,
etc.). It also includes an econometric analysis of their drivers. We show that transfer likeliness
increases with the size of the projects. The transfer probability is 50% higher in projects
implemented in a subsidiary of Annex 1 companies while the presence of an official credit
buyer has a lower--albeit positive--impact. The analysis also yields interesting results on how
technological capabilities of the host country influence technology diffusion in the CDM.
Benedikt SCHNELLBÄCHER, Johannes STEPHAN, February 2009, THE ROLE OF THE
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS REGIME FOR FOREIGN INVESTORS IN POST-
SOCIALIST ECONOMIES
http://www.iwh-halle.de/
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We integrate international business theory on foreign direct investment (FDI) with institutional
theory on intellectual property rights (IPR) to explain characteristics and behaviour of foreign
investment subsidiaries in Central East Europe, a region with an IPR regime- gap vis-à-vis
West European countries. We start from the premise that FDI may play a crucial role for
technological catch-up development in Central East Europe via technology and knowledge
transfer. By use of a unique dataset generated at the IWH in collaboration with a European
consortium in the framework of an EU-project, we assess the role played by the IPR regimes
in a selection of CEE countries as a factor for corporate governance and control of foreign
invested subsidiaries, for their own technological activity, their trade relationships, and
networking partners for technological activity. As a specific novelty to the literature, we assess
the influence of the strength of IPR regimes on corporate control of subsidiaries and conclude
that IPR-sensitive foreign investments tend to have lower functional autonomy, tend to
cooperate more intensively within their transnational network and yet are still technologically
more active than less IPR sensitive subsidiaries. In terms of economic policy, this leads to the
conclusion that the FDI will have a larger developmental impact if the IPR regime in the host
economy is sufficiently strict.
COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION on the management of intellectual property in
knowledge transfer activities and Code of Practice for universities and other public research
organisations, Brussels, 10.4.2008, C(2008)1329
http://ec.europa.eu/invest-in-research/pdf/ip_recommendation_en.pdf
EU PUSHES FOR BETTER KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER, Friday 11 April 2008
The Commission is hoping that a non-binding Recommendation on intellectual property and
knowledge transfer management will make EU national systems more coherent and boost
transnational academia-industry cooperation to turn more research into lucrative business
results.
http://www.euractiv.com/en/science/eu-pushes-better-knowledge-transfer/article-171564
CLIMATE CHANGE, TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
RIGHTS, 2008, copyright: ICTSD
http://www.iisd.org/pdf/2008/cph_trade_climate_tech_transfer_ipr.pdf
This paper explores how intellectual property rights, particularly as formulated in the rules of
the WTO, affect our ability to successfully address climate change. It was prepared for the
seminar on Trade and Climate Change, June 18-20, 2008, in Copenhagen, co-hosted by the
Government of Denmark, the German Marshall Fund of the United States and IISD. Maria
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Julia Olivia is lead author of this paper, produced under ICTSD's Global Platform on Linkages
between Trade Policies, Climate Change and Sustainable Energy. Substantive contributions
were received from Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Pedro Roffe, Ahmed Abdel Latif and Moustapha
Kamal Gueye to this paper. Content and editorial review was provided by several other ICTSD
colleagues.
Azèle MATHIEU, Martin MEYER and Bruno VAN POTTELSBERGHE DE LA POTTERIE,
2007, TURNING SCIENCE INTO BUSINESS: A CASE STUDY OF A MAJOR EUROPEAN
RESEARCH UNIVERSITY
http://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/07-035.html
The ‘entrepreneurial university’ is an increasingly frequent notion in debates about new ways
of knowledge production and the changing relationships between university, industry and
government. A rich literature has developed exploring outputs of such activity, most notably
‘patenting’, ‘licensing’, and ‘spinouts’. There is also a literature exploring the organisational
process in institutes of higher education (HEI’s). All too often these two streams of literature
ignore each other. The objective of this paper is to make a bridging contribution by exploring
the case of Université Libre de Bruxelles (U.L.B.). The main research question is: Does it pay
to make the entire university entrepreneurial? Our observations suggest that this would be an
effort that could possibly overstretch an institution’s resources. The U.L.B. case illustrates the
potential for nurturing entrepreneurial activities locally as well as the possibilities and
limitations of topdown actions instilling entrepreneurial culture amongst academic rank and file.
EXAMPLES:
UNITED KINGDOM: BAKER GROUP
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/education/education-hfe/education-knowledgetransfer/education-hfe-
knowledge-baker.htm
The Baker Group report looks into the commercialisation of research in the Government's
public sector research establishments (PSREs) and how it can be promoted. It talks about
issues of good practice, the barriers to successful commercialisation, the culture of
entrepreneurship within PSREs and their management of Intellectual Property (IP). It also
studies the relationship between PSREs and sponsor bodies. The report makes
recommendations to how to increase the rate at which PSRE research can be successfully
commercialised.
KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER FROM THE RESEARCH BASE
http://www.berr.gov.uk/dius/science/knowledge-transfer/index.html
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What is Knowledge transfer?
Within a modern, knowledge driven economy, knowledge transfer is about transferring good
ideas, research results and skills between universities, other research organisations, business
and the wider community to enable innovative new products and services to be developed.
Our mission is to make the most of the UK investment in science, engineering and technology.
Our aim is to promote the transfer of knowledge generated and held in Higher Education
Institutions (HEIs) and Public Sector Research Establishments (PSREs) to the wider economy
to enhance economic growth.
Why is it important?
In parallel with the governments increasing investments in science, there needs to be an
effective two way link between research and the market to ensure that good research
becomes good business. The UK's long term competitiveness demands increased
productivity, invention and innovation and exploitation of the science and engineering base
plays a vital role in supporting DIUS's role of driving up productivity. Knowledge transfer also
generates a return on the investment of public funds in the science research base. It also
enables HEI's.
Making the most of UK Research
A publication has been produced highlighting examples of knowledge transfer from the
research base. These case studies show some of the benefits the UK has gained from its
investment in basic research and how the economy as a whole benefits from researchers
engaging with business to create innovative products and services." The booklet is available
as a PDF file (on the right hand side of this page) or in hard copy from the BERR publications.
GERMANY: PROVENDIS SPEEDS UP THE PROCESS OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
http://www.provendis.info/index.php?id=498&L=3
The objective of PROvendis is to utilise the innovation potential of universities and research
organisations commercially through the transfer of knowledge to companies.
Why is this so important? Because innovations and a scientific edge are the basis for
economic success and prospective jobs. In global competition it is important how quickly and
how well a knowledge edge is converted into a competitive lead. Ultimately both - science as
the supplier of technology and business as user and marketer of the innovation - profit from
technology transfer.
As a patent evaluation agency for 23 universities of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany)
PROvendis offers companies exclusive access to the inventions and patents of over 20,000
scientists in a wide variety of technology fields. At the same time, PROvendis initiates, follows
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and supports collaborative projects between research and business to create the prerequisites
for a successful transfer.
PATENT POLICY OF THE HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITÄT ZU BERLIN
http://research.hu-berlin.de/patents/pl_pol_e.pdf
The goals of the Humbolt-Universität are the protection and the efficient utilisation of university
knowledge. Learning and knowledge are vital aspects of quality and performance in the
development of today’s society. The generation and imparting of knowledge are among the
key tasks of a university.
Innovation and the responsible dealing with the resource ‘knowledge’ are economic factors in
a knowledge based society. Humboldt-Universität is aware of its responsibility to protect and
utilise the knowledge generated by the university. In this it is not primarily the inventor who
needs to act, but rather the university which holds the rights to the invention in question. The
transfer of this knowledge into the industry by a clear and transparent process is the efficient
contribution of the university to society.
FRANCE: FIST CORPORATE
http://www.fist.fr/en
With over sixteen years of experience managing the patent and licensing portfolio of France’s
largest research organization, the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS),
FIST is well-positioned to assist clients from international and domestic companies and
research organizations in effectively moving their most promising technologies toward
commercialization.
With a team of 45 dedicated professionals, FIST is well equipped to analyze your technology
portfolio and ensure its successful development.
FIST’s current activities include:
- Active management of 1500 technologies from a wide range of scientific disciplines.
- Technical and legal analysis of over 300 new technologies per year.
- Management of a portfolio of more than 3200 patent priority filings.
- Tracking of a portfolio of more than 800 contracts and agreements.
- Negotiation and signing of over 100 technology transfer agreements per year
33. Commercial patent information providers
The PatCom Mission http://www.patcom.org/
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PatCom is an European based and globally acting Commercial Patent Services Group. This
association of commercial patent information providers works to ensure a fair balance between
the free information services of patent offices, commercial value-added patent information
services and users’ interests. PatCom co-operates with industrial user associations such as
PDG and PIUG.
The main objective is achieving the highest quality in issued patents and achieving the
maximum possible dissemination of patent information. PatCom members believe that high
quality patent searching can be achieved only by using a variety of sources and systems.
PatCom has set up working groups for co-operation in commonly important areas like IPC8
Reform, standards and SME training to intensify precompetitive communication in specifically
defined questions and to reach commonly agreed solutions
Grid THOMA, May 2008, A SURVEY OF SOURCES AND DATABASES OF IP
INFORMATION, Working Paper No 69
http://www.dime-eu.org/wp14
34. Recent articles on patents
34.1. Euractiv.com EU patent finally sees light – without Spain and Italy [Date: 11-12-2012]
http://www.euractiv.com/innovation-enterprise/eu-patent-finally-sees-light-spa-news-516568
A system that made patent registration up to 60 times more expensive in Europe than in China
is being scrapped in favour of a one-size-fits-all pan-European process. But Spain and Italy
refused to join the scheme because of language concerns.
Parliament and governments block EU patent [Date: 01-09-2010]
http://www.euractiv.com/en/innovation/parliament-and-governments-block-eu-patent-news-
497319
Seven EU countries and the European Parliament have told the European Court of Justice
(ECJ) that the European Commission's plans for a single patent court are unacceptable,
EurActiv has learned. The move leaves Europe deeply divided on an issue that goes to the
heart of efforts to boost innovation and competitiveness.
EU seeks to break patent translation deadlock [Date: 05-07-2010]
http://www.euractiv.com/en/innovation/eu-seeks-break-patent-translation-deadlock-news-
495842
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Innovative companies could see a dramatic reduction in the cost of patenting new inventions, if
a controversial European Commission plan is adopted by EU governments. The new rules
could pave the way for a single European patent to be issued in one of just three languages –
English, French or German.
European patent applications fall [Date: 28-04-2010]
http://www.euractiv.com/en/innovation/european-patent-applications-fall-news-486307
The number of European patent applications filed last year fell for the first time in 20 years,
according to new figures released by the European Patent Office (EPO).
In 2009, 135,000 applications were received – 8% fewer than in 2008.
The drop in the number of filings from outside the 36 member states of the European Patent
Office (EPO) was sharper (-11%) than for filings from European countries (-5%).
Italy and Spain yesterday (30 May) lodged a complaint with the European Court of
Justice against attempts by other member states to introduce an EU patent without
them. [Date: 31-05-2011]
http://www.euractiv.com/innovation-enterprise/italy-spain-take-patent-fight-court-news-505264
Italy and Spain yesterday (30 May) lodged a complaint with the European Court of Justice
against attempts by other member states to introduce an EU patent without them.
The EU patent scheme (see 'Background') is backed by 25 members but viewed as
discriminatory by Rome and Madrid.
In a statement, the Italian Foreign Ministry said it had lodged the complaint with the court to
defend the values of the union against abuse.
The statement said the use of enhanced co-operation procedure was "never intended to be
stretched to nullify the original aims of the European treaties".
Against the spirit of the single market
It added: "The use of enhanced co-operation within the patent sector is contrary to the spirit of
the single market, because it tends to create division and distortion within the market, and will
thus prejudice Italian businesses."
Supporters of a single EU patent say it is time for the Union to replace the current system,
which forces firms to patent their designs in every one of the bloc's 27 member states and in
23 official languages, at huge expense.
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It is the second time that the courts have waded in to the patent row. Before the enhanced co-
operation procedure had been agreed by member states in March, the Luxembourg court
ruled that the creation of a Community Patent Court would not be compatible with the
provisions of EU law.
Ministers to discuss the move in June
Hungarian Deputy Economy Minister Zoltán Cséfalvay said competitiveness ministers would
discuss the issue at a special meeting on 27 June in Luxembourg.
In response, Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier said: "I am confident that the
enhanced co-operation procedure presented by the Commission is not discriminatory. We are
assured that Italian and Spanish business will suffer no discrimination."
34.2. Cordis
PLUTO set to break down barriers to patent information access [Date: 26-05-2010]
http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN=32137
Improving access to multilingual digital patent libraries is the idea behind the new EU-funded
project PLUTO ('Patent language translations online'). The project consortium of five partners
started work on 1 April 2010. Over the next 3 years, it will receive a total of EUR 2.18 million in
funding under the Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme
(ICT-PSP) of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) to get an innovative system off the
ground and running.
In order to overcome language barriers that inhibit a more innovative society, the partners are
planning to create a rapid and efficient online translation service. The system will be tailored
specifically to the needs of inventors looking for information on existing patents and other
intellectual property (IP) related matters.
Inventors and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have to go through a lengthy and
costly process when venturing into a new market. A thorough search for existing patents is a
must, but this is made more difficult by language barriers, the distribution of information
sources over a multitude of sources and - last but not least - the technical and legal expertise
required.
The 'increase of IP-related activities results in an increased and urgent need for tools to cross
language barriers, as language differences are no excuse in cases of infringement,' explain
the project partners. 'In this context, the major risk for an SME is that it will invest all its
resources to enter a particular market, only to discover later that a competitor has a patent in
that market.'
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The online patent search and translation tool to be developed in the framework of PLUTO will
make use of existing web content and the latest machine translation tools. Thanks to its
specialisation, it will be more reliable than general-purpose machine translation tools, while
maintaining their speed advantage over human translations. Ultimately, it will cover all 23
official EU languages.
The academic and industrial project partners from Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands
and Austria bring just the right assets to the table to achieve this mission: a high-performance
machine translation engine; a comprehensive translation software environment; and a
methodology for evaluating machine translation output as well as information retrieval and
patent expertise.
The group will also cooperate closely with the European Patent Office (EPO).
Project officer Susan Fraser at the European Commission says that by funding such pilot
projects through the ICT-PSP programme, the Commission aims to show the public value of
research. 'If PLUTO manages to give small inventors and SMEs the possibility to exploit their
inventions more quickly and at lower cost, it fits perfectly into a sustainable European
innovation strategy,' she explains.
Periodic Report - NANORUCER (Mapping the NANOtechnology innovation system of
RUssia for preparing future Cooperations between the EU and Russia) [Date:
02/09/2011]
http://cordis.europa.eu/search/index.cfm?fuseaction=lib.document&DOC_LANG_ID=EN&DOC
_ID=123237951&pid=0&q=DB5CEFB1BECCF8E4B2F0EF93790E054E&type=sim
The EU is interested in obtaining a survey of main Russian research infrastructures active in
nanotechnology and nano-structured materials as a basis for initiating future cooperations
between the EU and Russia. In the NANORUCER project, two leading organisations from the
EU and Russia in the fields of innovation research and nanotechnology joined forces to deliver
this aim.
Based on a performance analysis using bibliometrics and patent statistics and a careful in
depth mapping of nanotechnology and nano-strucutured materials research activities in
Russia, a strengths and weaknesses analysis of the Russian nanotechnology innovation
system was made in their report. The report also includes a graph, pie chart and table.
34.3. Other EPO and USPTO Work Toward Joint Classification System (2012)
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http://www.cooperativepatentclassification.org/index.html;jsessionid=12iddiwerh552
The EPO and the USPTO have agreed together to work toward the formation of a partnership
to explore the development of a joint classification system based on the European
Classification system (ECLA) that will incorporate the best classification practices of the two
offices.
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