intellectual property

Synthesizing social network theory with a view of knowledge transfer as a search process, the authors argue that knowledge inequality across social boundaries should reach its peak when the underlying knowledge is of moderate complexity. To test this hypothesis, we analyze patent data and compare citation rates across three types of social boundaries: within versus outside the firm, geographically near to versus far from the inventor, and internal versus external to the technological class.

The authors examine the influence of faculty patenting activity on the rate, quality, and content of public research outputs in a panel dataset spanning the careers of 3,862 academic life scientists. They conclude that the often-voiced concern that patenting in academe has a nefarious effect on public research output is, at least in its simplest form, misplaced.

The authors build a model of pharmaceutical markets in the light of a patent race among competing firms. The incentive for R&D is the patent on either the breakthrough or the me-too drug. A feature of the model that has not been analyzed before is the prevalence of insurance in developed countries as opposed to developing countries, such that the true burden of financing R&D falls to a greater extent on the former than the latter.

This paper studies the impact of the strict patent regime on the patenting activity of Indian pharmaceutical firms and finds that patenting activity of these firms has increased after the signing of TRIPs. The study is conducted for 65 pharmaceutical firms for the period 1991 to 2004 using different parametric and semiparametric count panel data models.

This paper studies the impact of cash constraints on equilibrium winning probabilities in a patent race between an incumbent and an entrant. The authors develop a model where cash-constrained firms finance their R&D expenditures with an investor who cannot verify their effort.

In addition to the utilization of U.S. patent classification, the authors compare the results of a second analysis using the international patent classification. It is shown that the international patent classification is appropriate to conduct technology-oriented competition analyses, as long as a preparatory work of experts foregoes which classifies single classification symbols to technology fields as detailed as necessary to meet the demands of the individual analysis.

The authors analyze the duration of patent examination at the European Patent Office (EPO). Measuring a patents importance relying on the number of citations by subsequent patents, the authors find that more important patents are approved faster by the EPO than less important patents but that applicants are more hesitant to withdraw these potentially valuable applications.

The aim of this paper is to test two related propositions: (1) that there is a direct, positive relationship between the involvement of a prolific inventor in the production of knowledge and the magnitudes in the collective dimension of this knowledge production, as measured by the presence of foreign inventors and the size of the inventive team; and (2) that there is a direct, positive relationship between the involvement of a prolific (or foreign) inventor and the value of the new knowledge produced.

This paper aims at quantifying the economic value of knowledge spillovers by exploring information contained in patent citations. The author estimates a market valuation equation for semiconductor firms during the 1980s and 1990s, and finds an average value in the amount of $0.6 to 1.2 million "R&D-equivalent" dollars for the knowledge spillovers as embodied in one patent citation.

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.