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on Intellectual Property Rights |
| By: | Devrim Goktepe-Hultan (Max Planck Institute of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Incentives and assistance provided by TTOs, university policies, patent legislation and scientific disciplines are certainly part of the explanations for academic entrepreneurship. But they are only one facet of the story. Another facet is related to the scientists' motives, expectations and perceptions about the importance and necessity of such activities. There are no comprehensive studies to date that cover both internal and external factors. This is an important, complex and relatively under-researched theme. Our findings suggest that scientists are rarely engage in patenting activities for economic profit reasons or due to institutional and organizational support. Individual relations and networks with firms and other actors found to be important factors for scientists' entrepreneurial activities. Serial inventors act as role models to other scientists and crucial in the creation of an entrepreneurial milieu at the universities, as others would be affected by these behaviours and tend to follow them. However, the fact that university policies and TTOs have provided little incentives for scientists to get involved in entrepreneurship should not be considered to rule out institutional effects. |
| Keywords: | university patenting, incentives, individual inventors, inventors’ typology |
| JEL: | O31 O34 O38 B31 |
| Date: | 2008–09–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2008-071&r=ipr |
| By: | Nora El-Bialy Ibrahim (Faculty of Management Technology, The German University in Cairo) |
| Abstract: | This paper develops the first applied econometric model to examine the efficiency of existing enforcement measures and legal framework on prevailing software piracy rates in Egypt. Hence, it can be used as a tool when discussing new policies concerning the welfare of the interest groups and the pricing of protected software products (i.e., original software products). The model will focus on the available time-series data during 1992-2002 in Egypt. This time period was chosen due to the paucity of quantitative data concerning the model. The institutional environment is examined according to the New Institutional Economics (NIE) to illustrate the legal framework, the informal constraints and the enforcement authorities to support the empirical model. Analytical results show that efficient enforcement of property rights does not only imply increasing legal enforcement through imposing more severe punishments and prosecutions, as decreasing the prices of software plays a much bigger role. Thus relying on legal enforcement authorities alone is not always economically optimal, as it will not be able to deter IPR infringement on its own. |
| Keywords: | Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), Legal Enforcement, New Institutional Economics (NIE), Software Piracy, Egypt |
| JEL: | F19 K39 K42 L86 |
| Date: | 2008–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:guc:wpaper:13&r=ipr |
| By: | Juan Alcacer (Harvard Business School, Strategy Unit); Michelle Gittelman (Rutgers Business School, Rutgers University); Bhaven Sampat (Malman School of Public Health, Columbia University) |
| Abstract: | 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 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. |
| Keywords: | Technology, patents, patent examiners, prior art, citations |
| Date: | 2008–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hbs:wpaper:09-016&r=ipr |
| By: | Alexandre Almeida (Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto); Aurora A.C. Teixeira (INESC Porto, CEMPRE, Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto) |
| Abstract: | Innovation is the building block of competitive advantages and thus economic policies are increasingly focused on creating stimulus to increase a country’s innovative performance and growth potential, namely through knowledge accumulation in general and R&D in particular. In this context, current policy trend seems to support the strengthening of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), in particular, patent protection, with the argument that positive effects will emerge and would be extensive to all countries regardless their level of development. In this paper we question this “one size fits all” policy and assess how patent thicket affects knowledge productive investment taking into account countries’ development levels. Based on a panel of 95 countries over a ten-year period (1997-2006), our results show that patents have asymmetric impacts across countries development stages, evidencing pervious effects on technological leaders and positive ones on some laggards. Such evidence sustains that innovation policies be adjusted to countries development stages. |
| Keywords: | growth models; R&D; patents; economic development |
| JEL: | O41 O32 |
| Date: | 2008–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:por:fepwps:292&r=ipr |
| By: | Li, Xuan |
| Abstract: | A comparative study is undertaken that explores Chinese and Indian pharmaceutical industries under different patent regimes. It is found that relative to India, which had implemented process patent until 2005, China with a product patent regime since 1993 suffers from both lower drug accessibility and availability (the latter is a missing parameter in the literature). Also, China lags behind in both lower R&D investment and patents filed by Chinese nationals. Based on these findings and associated legal interpretation, we conclude that higher patent protection in China generates negative impacts on the pharmaceutical industries. Thus, governments should utilize TRIPS flexibilities and other regimes like price control to offset the anticompetitive effect in designing patent policies. |
| Keywords: | product patent, process patent, TRIPS, pharmaceutical industries, China, India |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:rp2008-36&r=ipr |
| By: | Nakanishi, Yasuo; Yamada, Setsuo |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the length of the grant lag under the early disclosure system in Japan. First, we measure the length of the grant lag. Second, we investigate whether reducing the grant lag significantly increases patent applications. We use data from 1985 to 2000 on 101 Japanese companies. The parameter for the grant lag was significantly negative in all equations. Therefore, reducing the grant lag increases patent applications. We also empirically investigated the determination of R\D. The grant lag significantly affects R\D |
| Keywords: | Patent; Grant Lag; Patent Policy; R\D |
| JEL: | O33 O32 |
| Date: | 2008–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:10718&r=ipr |
| By: | Suma Athreye; Martha Prevezer |
| Abstract: | This paper uses patent and publication data to assess the nature of technological advantages that are attracting R&D offshoring and outsourcing activities to India and China and the possible consequences of such R&D offshoring in increasing domestic innovative capability and building domestic research infrastructure. We find evidence that domestic patenting is concentrated in sectors that are different from sectors of R&D offshoring. Furthermore, whilst the domestic science base (as measured by publications data) in India and China shows strong complementarities in its specialisation profile to that in the US, our data also suggest that the location of international R&D activity in these economies from 1995 may not have strengthened the science base of these economies. Foreign patenting activities in India and China are also marked by a low attachment to the science base. |
| Keywords: | R&D offshoring/internationalisation, Science base, Emerging economies, India and China |
| Date: | 2008–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgs:wpaper:26&r=ipr |
| By: | Ottoz Elisabetta (University of Turin); Cugno Franco (University of Turin) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the feasibility and the effects of hybrid licensing agreements involving product innovations protected by patents and trade secrets. Since incentive and efficiency considerations suggest that a typical contract should provide for a negative fixed fee and post-patent royalties at the same unit level as before patent’s expiration, we conclude that per se prohibitions of these practices are not justified on economics grounds. |
| Date: | 2008–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uto:dipeco:200810&r=ipr |
| By: | Cerulli Giovanni (Ceris - Institute for Economic Research on Firms and Growth, Rome, Italy) |
| Abstract: | It is the aim of this paper to review the principal econometric models used so far to measure the effect of government’s support to private R&D expenditure; in order to reach this task, we first present a basic theoretical framework to identify the effects of public subsidies on business R&D, going on by extending it to the case of dynamic complementarities and presence of subsidy spillovers. The review of the econometric models, the core of the paper, starts from section 4. We first classify econometric models according to three dimensions: 1. structural (based on a system of equations) and non-structural (based on a reduced-form equation and, possibly, a counterfactual) models; 2. models using the subsidy variable in a continuous or in a binary form; and finally, 3. studies exploiting a cross-section versus a longitudinal (panel data) structure. The final part of the paper is an original contribution providing some guidelines to implement R&D policy evaluation in a dynamic subsidization setting. |
| Keywords: | business R&D; public incentives; econometric evaluation; dynamic treatment |
| JEL: | O32 C52 O38 |
| Date: | 2008–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:csc:cerisp:200803&r=ipr |
| By: | Antonelli Cristiano (University of Turin) |
| Abstract: | The new understanding of the characteristics of knowledge indivisibility and knowledge appropriability makes it possible to appreciate the key role pecuniary externalities play both in the generation and in the exploitation of technological knowledge. Pecuniary externalities affect access to external knowledge and its localized appropriation, by the intensive use of idiosyncratic factors and the introduction of biased technological change. Their combined effect shapes the convergence of the directed features of the knowledge generated at the firm level and explains the path dependent emergence of local and technological innovation systems and the dynamics of innovation cascades. |
| Date: | 2008–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uto:labeco:200807&r=ipr |