do stronger intellectual property rights increase innovation summary do stronger intellectual property rights ipr increase innovation recent decades have seen a global transformation in ipr standards underpinned by the theory that stronger iprs spur increased incentives to innovate this study tests the impact of ever more rigorous ipr systems on innovation through an index of economic complexity of 94 countries from 1965 to 2005 our results confirm that stronger intellectual property systems engender higher levels of economic complexity nevertheless only countries with an initial above average level of development and complexity enjoy this effect

on sharks trolls and their patent prey unrealistic damage awards and firms strategies of being infringed abstract patent trolls or sharks are patent holding individuals or often small firms who trap r d intensive manufacturers in patent infringement situations in order to receive damage awards for the illegitimate use of their technology while of great concern to management their existence and impact for both corporate decision makers and policy makers remains to be fully analyzed from an academic standpoint in this paper we show why patent sharks can operate profitably why they are of growing concern how manufacturers can forearm themselves against them and which issues policy makers need to address to do so we map international indemnification rules with strategic rationales of small patent holding firms and large manufacturers within a theoretical model our central finding is that the courts unrealistic consideration of the trade offs faced by inadvertent infringers is a central condition for sharks to operate profitably

you can t manage right what you can t measure well technological innovation efficiency abstract this paper proposes a new approach to tackle the innovation performance relationship it addresses the so far mixed and inconclusive results of studies analyzing this relationship we argue that the undifferentiated use of innovation inputs and outputs to measure firm innovativeness is not without problems and that from a productive perspective they should be simultaneously analyzed this study follows a two stage empirical analysis using a sample of spanish manufacturing firms for the period 1992 2005 by examining two inputs and two outputs of the innovation process in the first stage we estimate technological innovation efficiency by means of an intertemporal data envelopment analysis dea bootstrap and also observe the yearly efficiency changes based on a global malmquist index in the second stage we analyze the effect of technological innovation efficiency on firm performance through a generalized method of moments gmm system the results support our arguments that the best measurement of outcomes of technological innovations is through the efficiency with which they are developed in addition we test the moderating effect of technological intensity level and firm size on the efficiency performance relationship

mergers acquisitions and innovation performance in the telecommunications equipment industry the worldwide telecommunications equipment industry has experienced an enormous number of mergers and acquisitions m a this article examines the innovation determinants of m a activity a

imperfect patent protection and innovation the paper studies the effect of strengthening protection on r d incentives in the context of process innovation it shows that for non drastic innovations that do not render the pre existing technology obsolete the innovator might favor imitation if the expected royalty rate determined by the court is sufficiently high since imitation is discouraged for very high levels of patent protection r d investment is maximized for an intermediate level of patent strength this finding provides a theoretical explanation for emerging empirical evidence questioning the effectiveness of strengthening protection on innovation incentives it also serves as a justification for the imperfections of the existing patent system that allows for some infringement

optimal planning design and synthesis of symbiotic bioenergy parks abstract in this paper a systematic approach for synthesising and optimising a symbiotic bioenergy park is presented a novel stability analysis criterion of the symbiotic bioenergy park is developed based on the concept of incremental investment return analysis the synthesised symbiotic bioenergy park is stable as long as no partner bears a disproportionate share of additional investment costs relative to benefits gained from cooperation in case the symbiotic bioenergy park is not stable re evaluation e g additional incentives from government subsidies from high profit companies etc can be conducted amongst all participants in this work fuzzy optimisation is adapted to trade off individual economic interest and stability of each processing plant the optimised network configuration which achieves the targets with minimum biomass value losses can be determined prior to detailed design a palm based symbiotic bioenergy park case study is solved to illustrate the proposed approach

patenting in the shadow of competitors this article empirically examines the patenting behavior of new biotechnology firms that have different litigation costs i show that firms with high litigation costs are less likely to patent in subclasses with many other awards particularly those of firms with low litigation costs this pattern is consistent with the literature on costly litigation which suggests that firms that have high litigation costs will take greater precautions to avoid litigation these results are robust to a variety of control variables and modifications that seek to test alternative explanations

trends and volatilities in foreign patents registered in the usa this study analyses the patent trends and volatilities for the top 12 foreign patenting countries in the us market from 1975 to 1997 japan is ranked first in terms of foreign patents registered in the usa followed by germany patent registrations from each of these countries have increased steadily over time but at different rates using monthly time series data for 1975 1997 the time varying volatility of australian japanese and german patents registered in the usa is examined in detail the asymmetric ar 1 gjr 1 1 model is found to be suitable for australia and japan while the best fitting model for germany is the symmetric ar 1 garch 1 1 model

innovation and firm value an investigation of the changing role of patents 1985 2007 abstract this paper examines how the relationship between firm value and patent based indicators of inventive activity has changed over time we use data from more than 33 000 mergers and acquisitions deals between 1985 and 2007 and distinguish between american uspto and european epo patents our results indicate that over time epo patents have become the dominant indicator of innovative activity while uspto patents have no effect on firm value near the end of the sample period the results are robust to controlling for citations and are especially strong for small firms for firms operating in the drug and chemical industries and when target and acquiring firms operate in different industries or countries

comparative reliability of the dichotomous choice and open ended contingent valuation techniques abstract the comparative reliability of dichotomous choice and open ended contingent valuation methods cvm is evaluated by resurvey of the same households 9 months after their original survey test retest correlations on willingness to pay are statistically significant at the 1 level and range from 0 57 for the dichotomous choice cvm to 0 62 for the open ended cvm the test retest correlations were not statistically different between dichotomous choice and open ended cvm a likelihood ratio test for temporal stability of each method s willingness to pay functions indicates stability half of the time for both methods

the changing technology of technological change general and abstract knowledge and the division of innovative labour abstract in the past most innovations have resulted from empiricist procedures the outcome of each trial yielding knowledge that could not be readily extended to other contexts while trial and error may remain the primary engine of innovation developments in many scientific disciplines along with progress in computational capabilities and instrumentation are encouraging a new approach to industrial research instead of relying purely on trial and error the attempt is also to understand the principles governing the behaviour of objects and structures the result is that relevant information whatever its source can now be cast in frameworks and categories that are more universal the greater universality makes it possible for the innovation process to be organised in new ways firms can specialise and focus upon producing new knowledge and the locus of innovation may be spread across both users and producers more generally the use of general and abstract knowledge in innovation opens up the possibility for a division of labour in inventive activity the division of innovative labour the implications for public policy especially that on intellectual property rights are discussed

antitrust and technological innovation in the us ideas institutions decisions and impacts 1890 2000 abstract the history of antitrust policy in the us as it relates to technological innovation exhibits major swings every few decades between favoring concentration and favoring deconcentration this paper sketches for each period the contending ideas that frame antitrust technology policy debates the salience of these ideas in the larger antitrust policy process the institutions for agenda setting and decision making in this area the policy decisions themselves and more speculatively the impacts of these decisions on technological innovation and industrial development the paper concludes with a preliminary attempt to identify the cyclical secular and static processes that have shaped the history of this policy area and to use this analysis to inform future policy makers

reassessing patent propensity evidence from a dataset of r d awards 1977 2004 it is well known that not all innovations are patented but the exact volume of innovative activities undertaken outside the coverage of patent protection and relatedly the actual propensity to patent an innovation in different contexts remain to a major degree a matter of speculation this paper presents an exploratory study comparing systematically patented and unpatented innovations over the period 1977 2004 across industrial sectors the main data source is the r d 100 awards competition organized by the journal research and development since 1963 the magazine has been awarding this prize to the 100 most technologically significant new products available for sale or licensing in the year preceding the judgments we match the products winners of the r d 100 awards competition with uspto patents and we examine the variation of patent propensity across different contexts industries geographical areas and organizations finally we compare our findings with previous assessments of patent propensity based on several sources of data

patents versus ex post rewards a new look abstract economic studies that aim at comparing the patent system social efficiency versus an ex post reward system rest on an outdated view of patents they assume that firms use the patent system only in order to be granted a short term commercial monopoly rent this assumption is convenient because it allows straightforward comparisons between patents and rewards but it is not confirmed by empirical studies which stress that in many industries most firms use patents as strategic devices to trade technologies and to ease r d collaborations this change leads to rethinking the framework of the patent reward debate

corporate science in the patent system an analysis of the semiconductor technology corporate scientific publications are often presented as a strategic means for firms to create prior art with the objective to prevent others from patenting related inventions this presumes that corporate publications enter the pool of prior art which is relevant to judge the novelty of patent applications at the patent office and that corporate science has the power to block patent applications this paper analyses for the first time whether the presumed mechanism behind corporate publications as a means to preempt patents works with focus on the semiconductor technology our results show that scientific publications by corporations challenge the novelty of patent applications at the european patent office epo significantly more than other pieces of prior art detailed information from the epo patent examination procedure allows us to show that corporate publications threaten the novelty of patent applications if combined with other pieces of prior art like patents rather than as standalone documents this supports the view that corporate scientific publishing can be an effective means for firms to protect their freedom to operate if used as a complementary part of a firms overall ip protection strategy as proposed by scholars in the field of law and management science

coordination of supply chains by option contracts a cooperative game theory approach manufacturer retailer supply chains commonly adopt a wholesale price mechanism this mechanism however has often led manufacturers and retailers to situations of conflicts of interest for example due to uncertain market demand retailers prefer to order flexibly from manufacturers so as to avoid incurring inventory costs and to be able to respond flexibly to market changes manufacturers on the other hand prefer retailers to place full orders as early as possible so that they can hedge against the risks of over and under production such conflicts between retailers and manufacturers can result in an inefficient supply chain motivated by this problem we take a cooperative game approach in this paper to consider the coordination issue in a manufacturer retailer supply chain using option contracts using the wholesale price mechanism as a benchmark we develop an option contract model our study demonstrates that compared with the benchmark based on the wholesale price mechanism option contracts can coordinate the supply chain and achieve pareto improvement we also discuss scenarios in which option contracts are selected according to individual supply chain members risk preferences and negotiating powers

measuring the economic benefits of recycling the case of the waste agricultural film in korea recently increase of the waste agricultural film waf raises the loss of the resources and produces the environmental damage in korea the korean government has established the basic plan for increasing the recycling rate and abating the environmental damage the objective of this paper is to estimate the economic benefits attached to the policy of recycling the waf using contingent valuation method aiming to provide policy makers with useful information to make an informed public decision in recycling the waf the overall results show that the respondents well accepted the contingent market and would be willing to pay a significant amount for the proposed policy of recycling the waf the mean willingness to pay and the truncated mean willingness to pay per household were 4641 korean won us 3 6 and 5730 korean won us 4 4 respectively total economic benefits for the population amounted to approximately 14 33 billion korean won us 11 02 million per year this quantitative information can be use

the aggregation of climate change damages a welfare theoretic approach the economic value of environmental goods is commonly determined using the concepts of willingness to pay wtp or willingness to accept wta however the wtp wta observed in different countries or between individuals will differ according to socio economic characteristics in particular income this notion of differentiated values for otherwise identical goods say a given reduction in mortality risk has been criticized as unethical most recently in the context of the social cost chapter of the ipcc second assessment report these critics argue that being a function of income wtp wta estimates reflect the unfairness in the current income distribution and for equity reasons uniform per unit values should therefore be applied across individuals and countries this paper analyses the role of equity in the aggregation of climate change damage estimates using basic tools of welfare economics it shows one way of how wtp wta estimates can be corrected in aggregation if the underlying income distribution is considered unfair it proposes that in the aggregation process individual estimates be weighted with an equity factor derived from the social welfare and utility functions equity weighting can significantly increase aggregate global damage figures although some specifications of weighting functions also imply reduced estimates the paper also shows that while the postulate of uniform per unit values is compatible with a wide range of reasonable utility and welfare specifications there are also cases where the common value notion is not compatible with defensible welfare concepts

behind the recent surge of chinese patenting an institutional view abstract this paper examines a number of forces that have possibly contributed to the explosive growth of chinese patenting over the past decade after a review of previous hypotheses and conventional wisdom this study proposes an additional explanation and argues that patent subsidy programs implemented by each provincial region have played an important role in the growth of chinese patenting this institutional change taking place at the province level has induced an increase in patent propensity among not only firms universities and research institutes but also individuals empirical evidence based on publicly available data provides solid support for this argument it was also found that a larger fraction of applications are granted patent rights since the implementation of such programs suggesting that reduction in patent application quality may not be a serious concern unless the criteria used for patent examination have been lowered

the diminishing signaling value of patents between early rounds of venture capital financing a long stream of research has documented the positive effects that patents bring about to emerging firms in high technology industries the general consensus is that patents contribute to firm growth because they confer monopolistic market rights offer protection from competitors increase the negotiating position of patent holders and other benefits what has received relatively less attention in the literature is whether patents act as a signal that attracts investors such as venture capital firms the handful of studies that have addressed that question has not analyzed whether the signaling function of patents decreases after the initial attraction of venture capital as information asymmetries between investors and target firms reduce in this study we hypothesize that patent activity has a signaling value that diminishes once information asymmetries between investors and funded firms lessen to study our proposition we draw upon a longitudinal dataset of more than 580 u s based biotechnology firms to empirically demonstrate that biotechnology firms that have submitted patent applications substantially increase the level of funding they receive for their first round of financing in line with a reduction of information asymmetries once the initial investment has materialized patent applications and granted patents have no effect on the growth of venture capital funds raised during the second round of financing we conclude the study with a discussion of avenues for new research implications for policy makers that consider the usefulness of the current patent system and with insights that can be employed by managers of firms in knowledge intensive areas such as biotechnology

the effects of the us plant variety protection act on wheat genetic improvement in our model of partially appropriable invention if the us plant variety protection act pvpa of 1970 succeeded in strengthening intellectual property protection for plant breeders it should have led to increases in investment in varietal r d improved varietal quality and enhanced royalties these hypotheses are tested using data on us wheat we find that the pvpa may have stimulated public but not private sector investment in wheat varietal improvement but that the pvpa did not cause any increase in experimental or commercial wheat yields these findings indicate that the pvpa had little impact on excludability or appropriability in wheat varieties

a game theoretic approach to transfer pricing in a vertically integrated supply chain we study the problem of setting transfer prices in a vertically integrated supply chain in which the divisions share technology and transactions costs we develop a cooperative game that provides transfer prices for the intermediate products in the supply chain this model is applied both when the market prices for these products are known and also when their valuations differ we provide a solution that is fair and acceptable to all divisions in the perfect information case the shapley value generates the transfer prices while in the asymmetric case we obtain transfer prices from the solution to a linear program

the paradox of technological capabilities a study of knowledge sourcing from host countries of overseas r d operations we investigate the factors that influence the extent to which a multinational corporation s headquarters mnc hq sources knowledge from the host countries of its r d labs we propose that the technological capabilities held by mnc hqs present a paradox on the one hand they enhance mnc hqs learning capabilities on the other hand they reduce mnc hqs motivations to outsource knowledge from host countries we also argue that it is important to consider both relative and absolute levels of technological capabilities because relative levels can influence mnc hqs motivations to source knowledge from host countries statistical findings generally support our arguments

consumers preferences for the attributes of post pc results of a contingent ranking study with the explosive growth of the internet and the change in consumer demand post pc is emerging as a substitute for the existing desktop pc and laptop pc post pc is a new computer which is portable with wireless networking cheaper than the existing pc and specializing in the specific functions that consumers want rudimentary post pcs such as pda web pad and smart phone are already in use in the future owing to technological progress the heterogeneity of related companies and the low entry barrier various post pcs will be developed this paper attempts to analyse consumers willingness to pay wtp for post pc with such attributes as portability cpu speed data input method using key board or electric pen monitor size and price to this end a contingent ranking method is applied which makes the respondents rank hypothetical post pc alternatives featuring various combinations of attributes via a survey data collected in korea using the estimated wtp the shape and the capacity of future po

a survey of the economics of patent systems and procedures the last several decades have seen increases in patenting activity worldwide as well as growing issues related to patent quality in response to these quality issues a recent patent literature has emerged that investigates the behavior and incentives of patent examiners applicants and third parties in this paper we provide an overview of patent procedures patent systems and a survey of the new economic literature on patent systems both theoretical and empirical papers are considered policy implications coming from this literature are presented

the relative effectiveness of patents and secrecy for appropriation abstract changes in patent law global competition and the rise of several new technologies suggest that patents could be of greater value than secrecy for many innovative firms particularly small firms that are unable to use market power or other factors to appropriate their investments in innovation data from the 1993 european community innovation survey cis for up to 2849 r d performing firms is analysed to determine the relative importance of secrecy vs patents this particular combination of appropriation methods is interesting because secrecy can act as a mutually exclusive alternative to patents the results show that a higher percentage of firms in all size classes rate secrecy as more valuable than patents however ordered logit regressions show that the probability that a firm rates secrecy as more valuable than patents declines with an increase in firm size for product innovations while there is no relationship for process innovations the firm s r d intensity has no effect on the relative value of secrecy vs patents there is weak evidence to show that participation in cooperative r d increases the value of patents over secrecy for product innovations the results are relevant to ongoing debates over changes to the patent system and the need for policies to encourage small firms to patent more

patent citations an analysis of quality differences and citing practices in hybrid corn a growing empirical literature uses patent citations as a quality adjusted measure for innovation despite concerns about the validity of this measure this paper links patents with objective measures of improvements in the quality of patented inventions measured through performance in field trials for hybrid corn to examine three potential factors that influence citations 1 improvements in performance 2 citing practices of patent attorneys and 3 citing practices of patent examiners this analysis reveals that citations are robustly correlated with performance which confirms that citations are a useful quality adjusted measure for innovation the citing practices of patent attorneys and examiners however also influence citations patent attorneys cite early patents which help establish the patentability of an invention this practice may inflate citation counts for early patents particularly for inventions that have only recently become patentable attorneys also add self citations our anal

fair transfer price and inventory holding policies in two enterprise supply chains abstract a key issue in supply chain optimisation involving multiple enterprises is the determination of policies that optimise the performance of the supply chain as a whole while ensuring adequate rewards for each participant in this paper we present a mathematical programming formulation for fair optimised profit distribution between echelons in a general multi enterprise supply chain the proposed formulation is based on an approach applying the nash bargaining solution for finding optimal multi partner profit levels subject to given minimum echelon profit requirements the overall problem is first formulated as a mixed integer non linear programming minlp model a spatial and binary variable branch and bound algorithm is then applied to the above problem based on exact and approximate linearisations of the bilinear terms involved in the model while at each node of the search tree a mixed integer linear programming milp problem is solved the solution comprises inter firm transfer prices production and inventory levels flows of products between echelons and sales profiles the applicability of the proposed approach is demonstrated by a number of illustrative examples based on industrial processes

the effect of intellectual property rights on domestic innovation in the pharmaceutical sector summary there is little empirical evidence concerning the effect of intellectual property rights ipr protecting pharmaceutical products and processes on pharmaceutical domestic innovation indeed existing literature does not provide a punctual estimate of this effect for developing countries this paper fills this gap by exploiting a self constructed dataset which provides for a 22 year period information concerning ipr reforms involving pharmaceuticals for 74 developed and developing countries the identification strategy exploits the different timing across these countries of two sets of ipr reforms domestic innovation is measured as citation weighted domestic patent applications filed at the european patent office epo the highly skewed distribution of the dependent variable and the high number of zero observations are taken into account using count data models in particular a zero inflated negative binomial model is adopted to overcome previous literature assumption that all innovations are patented in the main markets of reference and to take into consideration the choice not to patent at the epo results show that innovation is sensitive to ipr protection but not to its degree moreover the effect is not long lasting my study also finds that developing countries profit significantly less than developed ones from the protection benefiting from an effect that is roughly half of that for developed countries consequent policy implications are examined and include the conclusions that a one size fits all approach can be inappropriate and that gradual reforms should be preferred to rare reforms that greatly alter the level of ipr protection

game theoretic analyses of decentralized assembly supply chains non cooperative equilibria vs coordination with cost sharing contracts abstract this paper considers a multiple supplier single manufacturer assembly supply chain where the suppliers produce components of a short life cycle product which is assembled by the manufacturer in this single period problem the suppliers determine their production quantities and the manufacturer chooses the retail price we assume that the manufacturer faces a random price dependent demand in either additive or multiplicative form for each case we analyze both simultaneous move and leader follower games to respectively determine the nash and stackelberg equilibria and find the globally optimal solution that maximizes the system wide expected profit then we introduce appropriate buy back and lost sales cost sharing contracts to coordinate this assembly supply chain so that when all the suppliers and the manufacturer adopt their equilibrium solutions the system wide expected profit is maximized

fair electricity transfer price and unit capacity selection for microgrids abstract microgrids are defined as an area of electricity distribution network that can operate autonomously from the rest of the network in order to achieve the best economic outcomes the participants in a microgrid can benefit from cooperation in microgrid design and operation in this paper a mathematical programming formulation is presented for fair optimised cost distribution amongst participants in a general microgrid the proposed formulation is based on the game theory nash bargaining solution approach for finding optimal multi partner cost levels subject to given upper bounds on the equivalent annual costs the microgrid planning problem concerning the fair electricity transfer price and unit capacity selection is first formulated as a mixed integer non linear programming model then a separable programming approach is applied to reform the resulting mixed integer non linear programming model to a mixed integer linear programming form the model is applied to a case study with a microgrid involving five participants

an economic analysis of household recycling of solid wastes the case of portland oregon abstract solid waste is one of the residuals generated by economic activities faced with rising disposal costs communities are implementing programs to encourage recycling activities this paper investigates the role of price incentives and other socio economic factors in household recycling participation in recycling is modeled as an ordered probit choice using a large sample of households from the portland oregon metropolitan area demand for solid waste collection is estimated using two stage least squares results indicate that increases in disposal fees encourage recycling although demand for solid waste collection services is not reduced substantially

regulation and firm size fda impacts on innovation this article estimates the highly differential impacts of fda regulations on pharmaceutical firms of various sizes where size is measured as scale of r d expenditures estimation is performed using the method of maximum quasi likelihoods using productivity trends of the united kingdom as a control to isolate fda regulatory effects in the united states it is shown that smaller u s pharmaceutical firms suffered devastating reductions in research productivity because of fda regulations in contrast the largest u s pharmaceutical firms apparently benefited from regulation as sales gains due to reduced competition more than offset their quite moderate declines in research productivity

factors affecting university industry r d projects the importance of searching screening and signalling this paper presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of research cooperation between firms and public research organisations pros for a sample of innovating small and medium sized enterprises smes the econometric analysis is based on the results of the know survey carried out in seven eu countries during 2000 in contrast to earlier works that provide information about the importance of pros research we know the number of firm pro collaborative research and development r d projects this allows us to study the determinants of firm collaboration with pros in terms of both the propensity of a firm to undertake r d projects with a university do they cooperate or not and the extent of this collaboration number of r d projects two questions are addressed which firms cooperated with pros and what are the firm characteristics that might explain the number of r d projects with pros the results of our analysis point to two major phenomena first the propensity to forge an agreement with an academic partner depends on the absolute size of the industrial partner second the openness of firms to the external environment as measured by their willingness to search screen and signal significantly affects the development of r d projects with pros our findings suggest that acquiring knowledge through the screening of publications and involvement in public policies positively affects the probability of signing an agreement with a pro but not the number of r d projects developed in fact firms that outsource research and development and patent to protect innovation and to signal competencies show higher levels of collaboration

the influence of regulations on innovation a quantitative assessment for oecd countries abstract regulatory framework conditions have been identified as important factors influencing the innovation activities of companies industries and whole economies however in the empirical literature the impacts of regulation have been assessed as rather ambivalent for innovation different types of regulations generate various impacts and even a single type of regulation can influence innovation in various ways depending on how the regulation is implemented the endogenous growth approach developed by carlin and soskice 2006 and empirically applied by crafts 2006 which determines endogenously the rate of technological progress and therefore innovation allows a conceptual analysis of the influence of different types of regulation on innovation in general the negative effect of compliance costs should be compared with the more dynamic effect of regulations generating additional incentives for innovative activities based on this approach we derive hypotheses on the impact of different specific regulations on innovation we differentiate between economic social and institutional regulations following the oecd taxonomy on regulations existing economic analyses are surveyed which are characterised by rather heterogeneous approaches data bases and results the paper aims to apply a comprehensive and comparative approach to investigate quantitatively the innovation impacts in 21 oecd countries using panel data for the period between 1998 and 2004 in summary the empirical results confirm the hypotheses derived from the conceptual theoretical framework determining technical progress and innovation endogenously and allowing a distinction between short term and long term effects consequently the theoretical approach is an appropriate starting point for the empirical analysis of the influence of different regulations on innovation

what is behind the recent surge in patenting abstract we investigate the cause of an unprecedented surge of us patenting over the past decade conventional wisdom points to the establishment of the court of appeals of the federal circuit by congress in 1982 we examine whether this institutional change which has benefited patent holders explains the burst in us patenting using both international and domestic data on patent applications and awards we conclude that the evidence is not favorable to the conventional view instead it appears that the jump in patenting reflects an increase in us innovation spurred by changes in the management of research

an optimization based negotiation framework for energy systems in an eco industrial park abstract this work presents an optimization based negotiation framework for plants in an eco industrial park eip the framework combines the principles of rational allocation of benefits with the consideration of stability and robustness of the coalition to changes in cost assumptions by analyzing its stability threshold the stability threshold allows stakeholders to make informed managerial decisions concerning the current or future plant interactions in an eip the proposed framework is presented via a palm oil eco industrial park peip case study consisting of a biomass tri generation system bts palm based biorefinery pbb and palm oil mill pom the results of the case study indicate that the deserving annual cost savings allocation for bts pbb and pom are 38 usd 2 100 000 14 usd 800 000 and 48 usd 2 600 000 of the total annual cost savings respectively based on these allocations the stability analysis determined that the peip coalition will stable as long as the symbiosis costs of bts pbb and pom fall within 37 46 10 30 and 20 25 of their respective raw material costs otherwise the stability of the peip coalition is compromised and further action can be taken as stipulated in the proposed framework

household responses to pricing garbage by the bag this paper estimates household reaction to the implementation of unit pricing for the collection of residential garbage we gather original data on weight and volume of weekly garbage and recycling of 75 households in charlottesville virginia both before and after the start of a program that requires an eighty cent sticker on each bag of garbage this data set is the first of its kind we estimate household demands for the collection of garbage and recyclable material the effect on density of household garbage and the amount of illegal dumping by households we also estimate the probability that a household chooses each method available to reduce its garbage in response to the implementation of this unit pricing program we find that households 1 reduced the weight of their garbage by 14 2 reduced the volume of garbage by 37 and 3 increased the weight of their recyclable materials by 16 we estimate that additional illegal or at least suspicious disposal accounts for 0 42 pounds per person per week or 28 of the reduction in garbage observed at the curb this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

motives to patent empirical evidence from germany abstract against the background of the patent upsurge we first analyse the role of patenting and alternative instruments to protect intellectual property based on a sample of german companies active in patenting in a second step we investigate the motives to patent considering sector and company size effects we find that company size matters both for the importance of instruments and the motives to patent especially important are the new strategic motives to patent like using patents to improve a company s own position in negotiations with partners licensees and the financial sector or to use patents as incentives for r d personnel or performance indicators these correlate positively with company size we derive some possible challenges for future patent policies from these insights

the quality factor in patent systems this article develops a methodology to compare the quality of examination services in three major patent systems quality is defined as the extent to which patent systems comply with the patentability conditions in a transparent way the methodology consists of a two layer analytical framework encompassing legal standards ls and their operational design od which includes several interdependent components that affect the stringency and transparency of the filtering process the comparison of patent systems in europe japan and the united states shows that their operational designs differ substantially the european system provides higher quality and more expensive examination services than the united states one while the japanese patent system is in an intermediate position the results illustrate that different system designs lead to different outcomes in terms of backlogs patent propensity and the number of dubious patent rights in force in this respect these findings i provide an empirical validation of the conjecture of a vicious cycle linking the quality of examination and demand for patents and ii highlight the need for a multifaceted convergence of patent systems before mutual recognition is put in place the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved

a great wall of patents what is behind china s recent patent explosion abstract china s patent surge documented in this paper is seemingly paradoxical given the country s weak record of protecting intellectual property rights using a firm level data set that spans the population of china s large and medium size industrial enterprises this paper explores the factors that account for china s rising patent activity while the intensification of research and development in the chinese economy tracks with patenting activity it explains only a fraction of the patent explosion the growth of foreign direct investment in china is prompting chinese firms to file for more patent applications amendments to the patent law that favor patent holders and ownership reform that has clarified the assignment of property rights also emerge as significant sources of china s patent boom these results are robust to alternative estimation strategies that account for over dispersion in the patent counts data and firm heterogeneity

patent rights and innovative activity evidence from national and firm level data global standards of patent protection have been strengthened and harmonized in recent years despite the heated policy debates and theoretical controversies empirical studies of the consequences for innovative activity are scant this paper contributes to the debate by providing an empirical analysis of the effects of patent strength on different aspects of innovative activity namely firm level research and development r d domestic patenting and foreign patenting the analysis employs an updated index of patent rights the results show the complexity of evaluating the effects of patent reform on innovative activity since the effects vary nonlinearly depending on the initial level of patent strength and vary by a country s level of economic development overall for developing economies patent strength negatively affects domestic patent filings and insignificantly affects r d and foreign patent filings for developed economies patent strength positively affects r d and domestic patent filings and negatively affects foreign patent filings after some critical level of patent protection is reached journal of international business studies 2007 38 878 900 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400306

pioneering inventors or thicket builders which u s firms use continuations in patenting why do firms use continuations in the prosecution of their patents motivated by the widespread use of continuations by u s firms and the prominence of this procedure in u s patent policy debates we investigate the influence of corporate and patent characteristics on the use of continuations we employ novel data on applicants and their filings of three types of continuations the continuation application cap the continuations in part cip and divisions during 1981 2000 to distinguish among the motives for continuing patents we find that cips are disproportionately filed by research and development intensive firms that patent heavily and that these continuations are more common in chemical and biological technologies patents issuing from cips cover relatively important inventions and their use appears consistent with a strategy of protecting pioneering inventions in contrast caps and divisions are associated with less important patents assigned to capital intensive firms particularly in computer and semiconductor fields and appear to be used in defensive patenting strategies we analyze the effects of the 1995 change in patent term and find that the act reduced continuations overall and shifted the output of continuations toward less important patents

patents and data sharing in public science richard nelson s the simple economics of basic scientific research 1959 and kenneth arrow s economic welfare and the allocation of resources for invention 1962 presented the basic analytical tools still used to understand the patent system two subsequent changes one primarily legal and the other primarily technological represent a sufficient departure from the prior state of the world as to call for ongoing re examination of some old assumptions about the economics of r d first an increase over time in the appropriability and appropriation of basic research results through the patent system raises new questions about the role of government funding second the revolution in information technology it and information networks has had reverberations outside the law of intellectual property in the evolving norms of the scientific community regarding data sharing this article examines these changes with particular attention to their impact on biomedical research an area in which the patent system is generally thought to be particularly important to the incentives of innovators copyright 2006 oxford university press

the economics of household solid waste generation and disposal abstract we develop a household production model of waste management that explicitly incorporates many of the technical and behavioral elements germane to current regulatory and non regulatory solid waste policy initiatives examination of first order conditions shows the interaction among household preferences these production options and external prices and fees a simplified simulation of our model illustrates these relationships showing that household response elasticities can vary widely over common price ranges and that relatively large household welfare gains may be obtained by adopting curbside recycling and unit pricing programs

swedish business research productivity sweden experienced an increase in the ratio of granted patents to research and development spending r d between 1989 and 1998 a period when r d spending grew rapidly the ratio of patents granted to r d spending research productivity increased by 40 over the period and the ratio of quality adjusted patents to r d exhibited an even more impressive increase of 60 sectors with especially high research productivity and quality adjusted research productivity include low and medium technology manufacturing chemicals and transportation however the growth in quality adjusted research productivity was primarily generated by the high tech pharmaceuticals and electronics industries the service based sectors experienced a significant increase in r d spending over the period but the research productivity decreased less

absorptive capacity and localized spillovers focal firms as technological gatekeepers in industrial districts despite the diffusion of communication tools and boundary spanning technologies knowledge flows in innovation processes retain a distinct localized nature in many industries and geographical clusters emerge as critical areas to foster technological diffusion in this article we focus on the knowledge mediating role as technological gatekeepers of focal firms in industrial districts based on a longitudinal dataset of 720 patents granted by the united states patent and trademark office uspto between 1990 and 2003 to firms in the automatic packaging machinery industrial district in northern italy and controlling for the uneven geographical distribution of patenting activities we show that i firms within the district use local knowledge to a greater extent and more rapidly than knowledge from outside the district ii focal firms use external knowledge to a greater extent than other firms operating in the district and iii other nonfocal firms within the district rely on knowledge generated by focal firms to a greater extent than would be expected given the geographic distribution of innovative activity in the industry implications for research on innovation in localized economic systems and firm level strategic differentiation are discussed copyright 2012 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

interrelation between patenting and standardisation strategies empirical evidence and policy implications abstract this paper analyses the relationship between strategies to protect intellectual property rights and their impact on the likelihood of joining formal standardisation processes it is based on a small sample of european companies on the one hand theory suggests that the stronger the protection of own technological know how the higher the likelihood to join formal standardisation processes in order to leverage the value of the technological portfolio on the other hand companies at the leading edge are often in such a strong position that they do not need the support of standards to market their products successfully the results of the probit models to explain the likelihood to join standardisation processes support the latter theoretical hypothesis the higher the patent intensities of companies the lower is their tendency to join standardisation processes

derivative ideas and the value of intangible assets we build a general equilibrium model where growth is driven by two invention types fundamental ideas that cause creative destruction and derivative ideas that enhance the value of existing inventions the model provides a new mapping from microeconomic patent data to aggregate total factor productivity growth and the aggregate value of privately owned knowledge we show how to measure the frequency of derivative ideas and the rate of creative destruction we estimate that derivative ideas account for 70 80 of all patents and their presence more than doubles the value of knowledge capital relative to what the measured innovation rate might otherwise imply

balancing contemporary fairness and historical justice a quasi equitable proposal for ghg mitigations abstract in this paper we analyze the impasse caused by polarizing positions of the united states and china in international negotiations on carbon mitigation by incorporating the bern carbon cycle module into the rice model developed by nordhaus and yang 1996 we set up a framework for tracking regional contributions to carbon concentration and to global climate change our proposal labeled the color preservation principle uses regional contribution share to global carbon concentration as the criterion for international cooperation through simulations in rice model with bern module rice b we examine the rationales of the arguments made by the united states and china we conclude that both countries standpoints are severely flawed to facilitate the global cooperation on carbon mitigations major concessions are needed from the two top carbon emitters

side payment contracts in two person nonzero sum supply chain games review discussion and applications this paper investigates supply chain coordination with side payment contracts we first summarize specific side payment contracts and present our review on the literature that developed general side payment schemes to coordinate supply chains following our review we discuss two criteria that a proper side payment contract must satisfy and accordingly introduce a decision dependent transfer payment function and a constant transfer term we present the condition that the transfer function must satisfy and use nash arbitration scheme and shapley value to compute the constant transfer term and derive its closed form solution next we provide a five step procedure for the development of side payment contract and apply it to four supply chain games cournot and bertrand games a two retailer supply chain game with substitutable products and a one supplier one retailer supply chain more specifically for the cournot game we construct a linear transfer function and a constant side payment to coordinate two producers for the bertrand game we build a nonlinear transfer function which is equivalent to a revenue sharing contract and show that the constant term is zero and two firms in the game equally share the system wide profit for a supply chain with substitutable products we present a side payment contract to coordinate two retailers for a two echelon supply chain we develop a proper side payment scheme that can coordinate the supply chain and also help reduce the impact of forward buying on supply chain performance

design complexity vertical disintegration and knowledge organization in the semiconductor industry this article examines the advantages and drawbacks of internal knowledge integration versus collaborative outsourcing as two polar modes of governance in the design of application specific integrated circuits asics increasing technological complexity miniaturization and the generalization of markets for technology have induced higher integration constraints for designers the pace of innovation and frequent changes in design rules require a tightly controlled design process as a consequence knowledge integrators must develop expertise beyond the scope of their domain of activity if they are to ascertain the overall efficiency of systems we find that although internalization of knowledge integration reduces coordination and agency related costs the involvement of partner firms in upstream design phases facilitates knowledge sharing and improves the coordination of innovation in modules the analysis of the evolution of the asics industry shows that while large system integrators remain the dominant players specialist firms are gaining market shares and do not hesitate to embark on the design of leading edge systems this result may simply reveal the increasing value of component knowledge in a disaggregated value chain however relying on a comparative case study of two similar development processes one with each of the knowledge integration approaches we confirm the strength of decentralized modes of governance on the condition that partner firms engage in a long term relationship copyright 2007 oxford university press

preemption games with private information preemption games are widely used to model economic problems such as patent races we introduce private information into these games and allow for this information to stochastically change over time this reflects e g how r d competitors improve their innovations over time and keep these innovations secret before patenting them the analysis initially appears intractable because of the complexity of the equilibrium updating of beliefs on opponents information however we demonstrate the existence of a class of equilibria and calculate these equilibria in closed form we find that the expected durations in these equilibria are longer than when players information is public but in some cases shorter than in the collusive outcome hence r d secrecy slows down innovation disclosure

the value of u s patents by owner and patent characteristics abstract 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 contrary to a common assertion patents issued to small patentees are much less valuable than those issued to large corporations 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

do patent rights matter 40 years of innovation complexity and productivity abstract does the rigorous protection of patents advance or retard economic development two decades ago a new global standard of intellectual property swept across developing and industrialized nations through the implementation of the wto s trips agreement many years later the issue of patent rights remains contentious in this paper we focus on the effects of patent rights systems on total factor productivity growth using dynamic panel regression analysis for 70 countries from 1965 to 2009 we show that the effects of stronger or more rigorous patent systems are insignificant for productivity growth in both developing and industrialized countries why does the strength of patents appear to have no impact on productivity classic economic theory suggests that stronger patent systems incentive innovative output with important spill over effects for productivity and growth we offer an alternative explanation using data from the economic complexity index we find that while patents rights are increasingly irrelevant to productivity the relationship between economic complexity and productivity is highly positive and significant our results are consistent with the contributions of the absorptive capacity theory in that they suggest it is not the discovery and ownership of novel products and processes at the innovative frontier that induces productive growth but the ability to adapt replicate and diffuse along the international productive chain

do patents work thickets trolls and antibiotic resistance this paper connects ideas from recent literature on the economics of intellectual property ip to address the question did the strengthening and broadening of ip rights from important patent policy changes in the us promote greater innovation the analysis rests on the theory of cumulative innovation which shows that if ip rights on a pioneer invention extend to follow on research and impediments to contracting exist then strengthening patents can actually reduce overall innovation recent empirical studies are consistent with the theory patents can significantly deter follow on research in complex technology areas where contracting is difficult computers electronics telecommunications but not in drugs chemicals and human genes i outline remedies from court decisions and antitrust policy for addressing inefficiencies from patent trolling patent thickets and the anti commons of fragmented ownership i then apply the analysis to the antibiotics market drawing on recent research to examine how patent and competition policies can be used to improve incentives for drug development in the battle against antibiotic resistance the literature provides persuasive evidence that the policy changes overreached in broadening and strengthening ip rights and reveals important patent reforms for improving the effectiveness of patent systems in the us and canada

measuring the economic benefits of the ozone pollution control policy in seoul results of a contingent valuation survey controlling ozone pollution has become an increasingly important policy issue in developing countries such as korea as well as in developed countries one response to this concern is to assess the benefits that would ensue from a proposed ozone pollution control policy this paper applies a contingent valuation method to obtain at least a preliminary evaluation of the benefits of a policy using a specific case study of seoul korea respondents overall accepted the contingent market and were willing to contribute a significant amount on average per household this willingness varies according to individual characteristics the study also discusses the importance of including the ozone pollution control problem in a cost benefit analysis and presents the policy implications of the results

a comparison of approaches to calculating confidence intervals for benefit measures from dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys this paper compares the performance of four approaches to calculating confidence intervals around dichotomous choice contingent valuation method dc cvm benefit estimates the performance of the approaches is compared using monte carlo simulation techniques for the two most common specifications for the welfare estimate the results indicate that all four methods tended to perform well on average but the methods differed in the frequency with which they performed well the results indicate the best choice depends on the sample size on the distribution of the welfare estimate and on the choice of functional form for the welfare estimate

environmental and economic gains of industrial symbiosis for chinese iron steel industry kawasaki s experience and practice in liuzhou and jinan with material and energy flow features iron steel industry has unique advantage in the industrial symbiosis is formation to realize environmental and economic benefit simultaneously the quantification of the scale and significance of is benefits is valuable for is promotion while there is much few attention to it especially in china under this circumstance this paper evaluates and compares the number scale and the related environmental economic gains of is activities in iron steel centered industrial areas in liuzhou and jinan in china and kawasaki in japan results show that in liuzhou there are three symbiosis activities between industries the annual by product waste exchange is more than 2 million ton y gaining economic revenue more than 36 55 million usd for the iron steel company in jinan seven symbiotic links are between industries and two are between urban community and iron steel plant the total by product waste exchange is over 8 million ton y and the economic gains account to 158 million usd in kawasaki iron steel industry relates to four symbiotic links the total by product waste exchange amount is about 500 kton y with the economic gains over 54 million usd the form and the complexity of the is network are different in the three cases is in liuzhou and jinan are with the features of large number and scale but single types while in kawasaki is includes not only traditional exchanges between iron steel plant and the other industries but also the innovative utilization of urban refuse by industrial area finally from the perspective of technology legislative framework and support policy circular technology inventory integrated waste management system information platform and national subsidies are needed to support the ever improvement of is promotion in china s iron steel industry c 2013 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

china as number one evidence from china s most recent patenting surge abstract china overtook the u s in 2011 to become the country filing the largest number of patent applications has china s patenting ascendancy been propelled by chinese firms increasing technological sophistication or their much greater propensity to seek patents using a unique and never before used data set where the state intellectual property office sipo patent records have been matched to their applicant firms by sipo we differentiate the two potential explanations by estimating a patent production function and by relating a firm s patents in force to its labor productivity our main findings are 1 while the patenting surge has been an across the board phenomenon most of the growth has come from the extensive margin of growth firms that were not actively applying for patents in the past 2 the correlation between patents and r d and that between patents and labor productivity have become weaker particularly for utility models and for the extensive margin of growth these results suggest that non innovation related motives for acquiring patents may have played an important role in the patenting surge

r d determinants accounting for the differences between research and development the determinants of r d are an important topic of innovation studies the classical schumpeterian hypotheses about the influence of size and market power have been complemented with the role played by industry determinants such as demand pull technological opportunity and appropriability in determining r d investments however r d has always been considered as a whole even though research and development activities differ in many aspects we take advantage of a new panel database of innovative spanish firms pitec to distinguish between research and development efforts of firms we analyze the differentiated role played by traditional r d determinants in driving research and development results show that demand pull and appropriability have a higher effect on development while technological opportunity is more influential for research differences are statistically significant important in magnitude and robust to the use of different indicators for demand pull technological opportunity and appropriability and to several robustness checks

contingent valuation in korean environmental planning a pilot application to the protection of drinking water quality in seoul this paper describes the application of the contingent valuation cv or willingness to pay wtp survey technique to a problem of public policy evaluation in seoul korea matters of principal interest include the definition of the problem and policy protection of seoul s drinking water supply from disruption by slugs of contaminants in the source river the han adjustments to standard cv techniques and assumptions required by the cultural and physical reality of seoul the representativeness of the spatially drawn sample estimation of the willingness to pay equation as a check on theoretical validity and the policy implications of the results the bottom line is asserted to be that cv may be especially valuable in countries such as korea that have serious environmental problems and a history of not producing data that might be used in alternative indirect benefit estimation exercises further it appears that if care is exercised in adjusting to local reality the method can be made as successful as it has been in the u s and northern europe

estimating the wetland rental fee a case study involving a taiwan wetland wetlands provide many functions that are both economic and recreational and are valuable in terms of their ecological diversity while at the same time being nonmarket value products the purpose of this study is to estimate the optimal wetland rental through estimations of both the demand and supply functions in relation to wetland the wetland supply function is directly estimated based on the data provided by the owners of the wetland while the estimation of the wetland input demand function involves using the bootstrapping and contingent visitation approaches such estimation approaches could also be applied to other nonmarket value products that give rise to environmental externalities the estimation of rental fee could provide a long term leasing contract that gives the landlord with a particular rent to lease their lands to support a wetland eco tourism park to maintain wetland for substantial management several environmental management policy implications are also addressed

patent statistics in the age of globalisation new legal procedures new analytical methods new economic interpretation abstract patent analysis seems to become more difficult in the age of globalisation starting from microlevel observations it is evident that multinational enterprises pursue different technological marketing and strategic aims in effect they cover world markets in a distinctly different manner with patent intellectual property this article in good economic tradition starts with consideration of recent microlevel patent behaviour in telecommunications before new macroeconomic procedures to measure technical change are outlined the new challenges to patent statistics comprise the assignment of countries to patent documents of multinational firms the appropriate use of economic filters in comparing patent statistics from various patent offices the fitting of the new international patent procedures offered by the amended patent cooperation treaty pct to national statistics the assignment of patent applications in case of withdrawn country destinations and the estimation of time series if most recent data sets are incomplete we propose consistent workable adjustments to patent statistics that overcome the above mentioned biases which we denote the triad patent model for measuring technical progress in the proper economic sense first applications deal with the assessment of the pace of technical change in major countries up until 1995 in conclusion we discuss problems for future research the main policy implication is that macroeconomic patent statistics can correct for the effects of global knowledge production indeed as these are not disruptive but rather limited and well accountable

the changing composition of innovative activity in the us a portrait based on patent analysis abstract in this paper patent bibliometrics are used to investigate shifts underway in the american innovation system patent indicators point to extraordinarily dynamic innovation in information and health technologies accompanied by a shift in the center of us innovation from the east to the west coast innovating companies are adapting to the demise of large corporate basic research laboratories by using their own research instead growth in university patenting is also striking and universities have become dominant patentees in a few large economically vibrant cities the importance of universities to local innovation has also been revealed by the growth in referencing from patents to papers which allows us to see that companies preferentially reference papers from in state public sector institutions