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on Intellectual Property Rights |
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Issue of 2014‒02‒21
three papers chosen by Giovanni Ramello Universita' del Piemonte Orientale Amedeo Avogadro |
| By: | Andrey V. Kashanin (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | In codifying intellectual property rights, Russian legislators have left what standards of originality and creativity can be considered criteria of copyrightability a moot point. Nevertheless, it is crucial for answering questions about where the lower boundary of copyrightability lies and, consequently, what intellectual products that have an insignificant creative component, but are of high economic importance – such as databases, computer software, advertisement slogans or design work – should be copyrightable. This article addresses the problem of identifying criteria for copyrightability and non-copyrightability in the Russian legal literature by modeling various types of demarcation criteria and analyzing their strong and weak points. Analyzing debates in the legal literature warrant the conclusion that there is a trend to set looser standards for originality and creativity and grant copyright protection to works of low authorship |
| Keywords: | copyright, intellectual property, intellectual rights, personal non-property rights, exclusive rights, copyrightable work, copyrightability, works of low authorship, originality, creativity. |
| JEL: | O34 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:32/law/2014&r=ipr |
| By: | Antonio Vezzani (JRC-IPTS); Fabio Montobbio (Università degli Studi di Torino ? Dipartimento di Economia e Statistica "Cognetti de Martiis"); Sandro Montresor (University of Bologna); Gianluca Tarasconi (CRIOS - Center for Research in Innovation, Organization and Strategy, Bocconi University) |
| Abstract: | The present note contains an explorative and introductory analysis of the patenting activity exhibited by the top 100 companies of the IRI Scoreboard, and intends to identify strengths and weaknesses for its possible future extension to the whole Scoreboard. With respect to these companies, patent data are drawn from Patstat, on the basis of which patent families are built up, and crossed with other data on their R&D investments. Both the R&D and the patent applications of the investigated sample of companies increase over time. At the same time, important sector specificities in the R&D-patent relationship have been found. The analysis of the technological competences of the overall sample yields promising results. A first examination of the IPC classes of the patent applications suggests a certain concentration in the kind of technological knowledge that companies master. The analysis of the knowledge base and, more specifically, the companies' involvement in the creation of key enabling technologies (KETs) also highlights that important sector specificities go along with firm specific factors. All-in-all “augmenting” the Scoreboard data with company level patent information appears to be an interesting extension to be pursued. |
| Keywords: | patents, technological profile, KETS, R&D, IRI Scoreboard companies |
| JEL: | O30 O31 O32 |
| Date: | 2014–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc86166&r=ipr |
| By: | Richard B. Freeman; Wei Huang |
| Abstract: | This study examines the ethnic identify of the authors of over 1.5 million scientific papers written solely in the US from 1985 to 2008. In this period the proportion of US-based authors with English and European names fell while the proportion of US-based authors with names from China and other developing countries increased. The evidence shows that persons of similar ethnicity co- author together more frequently than can be explained by chance given their proportions in the population of authors. This homophily in research collaborations is associated with weaker scientific contributions. Researchers with weaker past publication records are more likely to write with members of ethnicity than other researchers. Papers with greater homophily tend to be published in lower impact journals and to receive fewer citations than others, even holding fixed the previous publishing performance of the authors. Going beyond ethnic homophily, we find that papers with more authors in more locations and with longer lists of references tend to be published in relatively high impact journals and to receive more citations than other papers. These findings and those on homophily suggest that diversity in inputs into papers leads to greater contributions to science, as measured by impact factors and citations. |
| JEL: | J01 J1 J15 |
| Date: | 2014–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19905&r=ipr |