Collective Knowledge, Prolific Inventors and the Value of Inventions: An Empirical Study of French, German and British Owned U.S. Patents, 1975-1998

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.