intellectual property

The authors attempt to figure out what makes a patent valuable and how to identify them. They examine data on every patent issued between 1963-1999 to compare characteristics of litigated patents with general patents.

The paper documents two episodes of
collective invention and proposes a general model based on search theory. Collective invention episodes begin with an invention or a change in legal restrictions.

This study finds that small business patents were found to have more public value but less private value than large business patents. Small business patents are more likely to be among the rare patents that "hit the jackpot" in value.

This paper examines the recent siting of foreign-owned corporate technological development in European regions. The data used are patents granted in the U.S. to the worlds largest firms in the period 1987-95. The authors find that location decisions are positively influenced by intra- and inter-industry spillovers, and the local scientific and educational infrastructure.

The objective of this study is to advance, from a quantitative point of view, in the knowledge of the science-technology flows from a regional perspective. The methodology utilised in this study is based on the scientific citations in patent documents, and has previously only been applied in national contexts.

In this paper the author addresses the positive question of when countries would want to treat foreign inventors the same as domestic inventors, and how their incentive to do so depends on reciprocity. She also investigates an equilibrium in which regional policy makers choose IP policies that serve regional interests, conditional on each others policies, and investigate the degree to which "harmonization" can redress the resulting inefficiencies.

The authors hypothesize that because of a large range of complementary competences, firms try to cope with knowledge transmission problems and to keep as innovative as possible. They aim to test the hypothesis by using an original (quantitative and qualitative) database on competences for innovation.

The paper analyzes the joint problem of the optimal provision of research and development (R&D) and consumption incentives for goods that at the same time undergo technological change and have external consumption effects. The results are discussed in the context of the pharmaceutical industry which simultaneously is one of the most R&D-intensive industries and one for which consumption of its output often seems to involve external effects, e.g. through human rights-based access issues.

The paper aims at overcoming several shortcomings of previous empirical studies on the relationship between intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and foreign direct investment (FDI). The authors first analyze FDI on a sectorally and regionally disaggregated level, and then address the proposition that stronger IPR protection raises not only the quantity, but also the quality of FDI.

The paper discusses the likely impact of business method patents on innovation. It first reviews the facts about business method and internet patents briefly
y and then explores what economists know about the relationship between the patent system and innovation.