Patent activity and technical change

As creations of the mind, intellectual property includes industrial property and copyrights. This paper presents an aggregate production function of the generalized Fechner–Thurstone (GFT) form to analyze the impact of an important component of intellectual industrial property, namely patent activity, on technical change in the USA for the period 1947–1981. Patents should alter isoquant maps, and measuring their elasticities is both intuitively and empirically appealing. We define a technology-changer as a variable that has an impact on the elasticity of the marginal rate of technical substitution (MRTS) between inputs of the GFT production function over time. Various types of US patent grant activity, specifically total, domestic, foreign, successful and unsuccessful patent applications, are used as instruments for the technology-changer. Using the GFT specification, the impacts of various technology-changers on the elasticity of the MRTS between inputs are estimated directly. It is found that granted (or successful) patents, patents granted to foreign companies and individuals, total patent applications, and even unsuccessful patent applications, have significant impacts on the rates at which inputs are substituted for each other over time in production.     

试论专利文献的竞争情报价值

文章从专利与专利文献的概念与特点、专利文献信息的竞争情报功能和专利文献在竞争情报研究中的作用等3个方面论述了专利文献在竞争情报研究中的价值,重点探讨了专利文献的法律、技术、经济功能及在企业竞争对手分析、企业专利战略、行业技术发展趋势与水平、避免重复研究等4方面的价值。     

广西专利转化平台构建初探

专利产出最终目的是实施产业化和转化成生产力。当前,广西专利技术实施和产业化还存在转化难、转化率低、转化效果不佳等问题。文章针对广西实施专利转化工作所面临的问题,提出了广西专利转化平台构建方案和功能设计。     

Getting Away with Robbery? Patenting Behavior with the Threat of Infringement

The paper examines how an innovator's ability to enforce her patent rights affects (and is affected by) her decision to patent her innovation and her patent breadth decision. Specifically, the paper shows that the innovator may find it optimal to patent her innovation even if litigation is not pursued in the event of patent imitation. The patent is valuable because it can be used to influence the entrant's location decision in a way that is profitable for the incumbent. In addition to showing that a patent need not be legally enforced to be valuable, the paper shows that the lower is the entrant's R&D cost, the smaller is the innovator's incentive to patent her product. If patenting occurs, however, the lower is the R&D cost, the greater is the patent breadth that could be chosen without triggering imitation.     

The welfare cost of one-size-fits-all patent protection

To analyze the welfare gain from allowing for differentiated patent protection across sectors, this study develops a two-sector quality-ladder growth model in which patent breadth is a policy variable and derives optimal patent breadth under two patent regimes. We show that (a) uniform optimal patent breadth is a weighted average of sector-specific optimal patent breadth and (b) sector-specific optimal patent breadth is larger in the sector that has a larger market size and more technological opportunities. To derive the optimal policy, we allow for an arbitrary path of patent breadth and derive the optimal path by solving a Stackelberg differential game. We find that the optimal path of patent breadth under each patent regime is stationary, time-consistent and subgame perfect. Finally, we perform a numerical investigation and find that even a moderate degree of asymmetry across sectors can generate a significant welfare cost of uniform patent protection.     

Assessing the R&D Management of a Firm in Terms of Speed and Science Linkage: Evidence from the US Patents

We evaluate statistically how the R&D management of a firm affects its research quality. Controlling for technology areas, a firm having short citation lag relative to the prior patent literature has a significantly high patent quality in terms of patent citation and the number of claims per patent, suggesting that the speed of R&D mattes. Such an effect is more significant in IT than in biotechnology & pharmaceuticals. A firm having high citations to the science literature has also a high patent quality, indicating the importance of the capability to use scientific knowledge. Such an effect is significant both in biotechnology & pharmaceuticals and in IT.     

奇虎360科技有限公司专利管理地图分析

专利战略对于企业取得经济利益、获取竞争优势有着重要作用。本文运用专利管理地图分析方法,对奇虎360科技有限公司的专利类型、专利年代趋势、技术领域构成、主要发明人和主要竞争对手进行了分析:奇虎科技专利申请以发明专利为主,专利申请质量较高;主要集中在电学和物理两大技术领域;奇虎360发明人研发实力较强,其专利技术生命周期正处在由发展期向成熟期转变阶段。在互联网安全专利竞争领域,奇虎科技相对直接竞争对手占较大优势。文章最后对未来360专利战略的专利申请数量质量、专利人力资源管理、专利竞争对手监控、以及应对专利侵权纠纷方面提出相关建议。     

Estimation of patent licensing value using a flexible demand specification

A patent owner who is considering licensing its patent to a competitor faces a dilemma. By giving a license to the competitor, the patent owner stands to lose profits due to increased competition. In order to be willing to license, therefore, the patent owner must receive a royalty that at least compensates for these lost profits. The minimum acceptable royalty depends upon the competitive impact the potential licensee's product would have on the patent owner's product. We describe how to estimate econometrically this competitive impact and how a patent owner might use this information to determine the minimum acceptable royalty. We discuss the advantages of using a flexible functional form for the demand system specification that underlies the competitive analysis. Finally, using an empirical example, we illustrate the large differences that can arise between results based on flexible forms versus non-flexible forms.     

科研单位R＆D支出来源、用途与其专利申请量之关系研究

本文实证分析了科研单住R＆D支出来源、用途与其专利申请产出之间的关系,结果表明专利申请产出与R＆D支出来源与用途有关,促进科研单位来源于政府资金的R＆D支出的专利产出,将在很大程度上提高我国专利申请量,也是充分利用我国科研单住专利申请产出能力的关键.研究结果还表明,基础研究同样可以产出专利申请,这也为我国应提高基础研究投入提供了一个理由.     

On the optimal mix of patent instruments

A special characteristic of the patent system is that it features multiple patent-policy levers that can be employed by policymakers. In this note, we develop an R&D-based growth model to analyze the optimal mix of patent instruments by considering patent breadth and the division of profit in research joint ventures. Our results are as follows. First, we analytically derive the optimal mix of patent breadth and the profit-division rule. Then, we calibrate the model to quantitatively evaluate the welfare gain from optimizing both patent instruments versus optimizing only patent breadth. We find that the welfare gain can be quantitatively significant.     

基于博弈的专利诉讼与交叉许可决策研究

随着企业研发能力和知识产权保护意识的逐渐增强,越来越多的企业通过建立专利壁垒来保证自身的持续竞争力与市场地位。"专利丛林"的现象导致企业进行技术创新以及新产品的开发举步维艰。为了节省成本,科技企业之间相互的专利侵权现象时有发生。面对相互的专利侵权现象,有的企业运用专利诉讼的手段与对方发起"专利大战"以维持自身的竞争优势,也有的企业通过专利的交叉许可协议,与对方建立长期的专利合作关系。本文通过构建博弈模型,研究了企业进行专利诉讼以及交叉许可的选择决策的机理。     

Licensing standard-essential patents with costly enforcement

We study the interaction between the holder of a standard-essential patent (SEP) and two downstream firms using the patented technology to design standard-compliant products. The SEP holder approaches the downstream firms simultaneously in the shadow of patent litigation and is subject to fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory licensing requirements. We show that the patent holder faces a litigation credibility constraint and a license acceptability constraint when setting its licensing terms. For patents of intermediate strength, there is no royalty that allows the patent holder to reconcile these constraints. Consequently, it cannot license its technology and must go to court against infringers. We show that the availability of an injunction improves the patent holder's ability to license its technology, but it tends to inflate the royalty rate for implementers.     

Patent Settlements as a Barrier to Entry

We formulate a model of entry with two incumbent firms—a patent holder and an infringer—and a potential entrant, with asymmetric information about the validity of the infringed patent (patent strength) between incumbent firms and the entrant. Within this framework we show that patent settlements between the incumbent firms can be mutually beneficial even when the cost of trial is zero and the settlement agreement takes the form of a simple fixed license fee. For patents of intermediate strength, settlements are a tool for entry deterrence. The two parties agree on a high settlement amount which sends a credible signal to “outsiders” that the patent is not weak and therefore entry will not be profitable. This provides a novel explanation for the role of settlements and to the recent observation of high license fees negotiated in settlement agreements. It suggests that firms should disclose the settlement amount if they want to keep out further entrants. We also show that even nonreverse settlements that entail only a fixed fee can be anticompetitive because they are used to block entry.     

When patents matter: The impact of competition and patent age on the performance contribution of intellectual property rights protection

The question whether patenting impacts patenting firms' subsequent financial performance is important for technology-oriented companies. However, relevant research has led to contradictory results. We strive to overcome this impasse by introducing innovation competition and patent age as moderators of patents' performance contribution into the discourse. Based on a sample of 975 cases from diverse industries, we find strong support for our arguments. In line with our expectations, the results show that the number of patents granted, the degree of patent competition, and the timeliness of a patent contribute positively to financial performance. Moderation analysis nuances our findings by showing that the impact of patent protection on financial performance is stronger when the patent competition is stronger and the patents are younger.These findings provide insights into the conditions under which patenting leads to higher financial performance. Our findings highlight the importance of innovation competition and patent age for innovation research. The empirical results show firms that patenting pays and that, in order to tap the full potential of patents, they need to focus on emerging competing industries and reduce the time to market. Policy makers learn that patenting is a successful approach to foster innovation at limited social costs.     

Dynamic Effects of Patent Policy on Sequential Innovation

When one patented innovation enables another, endogenous delay of the latter has important implications for the economics of patent life and scope, if licensing is negotiated ex post. Optimal patent life may be finite under competition, even if the royalty imposes no deadweight loss and there is no competitive dissipation of rent. Reduced scope of the first patent eliminates delay of costly enabled innovations, whether monopolized or competitive, and a combination of limited scope and infinite life can be optimal. If the second innovation is negotiated ex ante, its patentability can increase or decrease the first innovator's profit, depending on cost and market structure of the second innovation, and patent life.     

Development of patent roadmap based on technology roadmap by analyzing patterns of patent development

Recently, patent forecasting and planning has been emphasized as an essential process in the strategic management of technology because well-planned patents will make larger profits and occupy dominant positions first. Thus, this paper aims to suggest the concept and process of a patent roadmap based on a technology roadmap and patterns of patent development. For this, first, ontology of technology is generated to structure the characteristics of technology based on the existing technology roadmap and then patents are collected from a patent database. Second, collected patents are grouped by similarities based on vectors of extracted keywords and grouping results are classified by TEMPEST. In this step, keywords extracted from the previous phase are matched with TEMPEST individually and patent groups are categorized in accordance with high relevance between representative keywords in patent groups and core keywords in each category of TEMPEST. Third, the patterns of patent development are identified for each patent group and categorized by two types – structural and temporal patterns. Consequently, extracted patterns serve as evidence of patent planning, and the patent roadmap is drawn with the technology layer composed of the technology roadmap and the patent layer that each group is mapped on. The proposed approach is illustrated by the case of the transparent AMOLED display. The patent roadmap will enable managers to establish patenting strategies in order to achieve a valuable core patent that has the potential to become a business model, yielding good returns in the long term.     

论区域专利促进体系的构建

区域性专利促进体系的构建是区域政府实施国家知识产权战略的有效手段。区域政府应当依据专利制度的原理,全面考虑专利技术创造、专利成果应用和专利信息流通等方面的需要,通过一系列政策措施来构建高效运作的专利促进体系。     

An Empirical Look at Software Patents

Software patents have grown rapidly in number and now comprise 15% of all patents. They are acquired primarily by large manufacturing firms in industries known for strategic patenting; only 5% belong to software publishers. The very large increase in software patent propensity over time is not adequately explained by changes in R&D investments, employment of computer programmers, or productivity growth. The residual increase in software patent propensity is consistent with a sizeable increase in the cost effectiveness of software patents during the 1990s, perhaps arising from changes in the application of patent law to computer software.     

MULTIPLE-PRIZE CONTESTS – THE OPTIMAL ALLOCATION OF PRIZES

Abstract.  Multiple-prize contests are important in various fields of economics ranging from rent seeking over labour economics, patent and R&D races to tendering for (governmental) projects. Hence it is crucial to understand the incentive effects of multiple prizes on effort investment. This survey attempts to outline, compare and evaluate the results from the literature. While a first prize always results in a positive incentive to invest effort, second and later prizes lead to ambiguous effects. Depending on the objective function, the characteristics of the individuals and the type of contest a different prize allocation is optimal.     

Patents for genetic inventions: a tool to promote technological advance or a limitation for upstream inventions?

Today's conventional wisdom among economists and lawyers is heavily weighted toward the proposition that strong and broad patent rights are conducive to economic progress. Concerns have been raised as to the extent to which strong patent rights could build up barriers to follow-up research and thus hinder technological advance. This poses a number of difficulties particularly in the area of genetics with respect to the scope of protection and the definition of what is patentable. This article considers the problems of ‘anti-commons’, limitations for upstream inventions, patent thickets and royalty stacking with licenses for genetic inventions. A survey of 53 biotechnology companies in Switzerland builds the empirical basis of the investigation. The survey results confirm that the concepts of ‘anti-commons’, ‘patent thickets’ and ‘royalty stacking’ are indeed relevant. However, they are not highly relevant for the Swiss biotechnology industry from an economic point of view. A broad research exemption combined with a protection limited to concrete disclosure functions of DNA patents and compulsory licensing arrangements are considered as feasible remedies for overcoming certain difficulties with gene patents.