Prizes and patents: Using market signals to provide incentives for innovations

We consider environments in which agents other than innovator receive the signals about the quality of innovation. We study whether mechanisms can be found which exploit market information to provide appropriate incentives for innovation. If such mechanisms are used, the innovator has incentives to manipulate market signals. We show that if an innovator cannot manipulate market signals, then the efficient levels of innovation can be uniquely implemented without deadweight losses – for example, by using prizes. Patents are necessary if the innovator can manipulate market signals. For an intermediate case of costly signal manipulation, both patents and prizes may be optimal.     

知识产权浅析

一、知识产权的内涵及特点 知识产权保护制度是用法律手段保护无形资产、推动社会进步、促进经济发展的管理制度。这种行为规范,是智力活动成果的重要法规。根据财富的归属不同,有你的、我的、他的之别。无论是物质财产、精神财产、知识财产都有个所有权和使用归属即产权问题。产权即财产所有权,民法通则第71条对所有权的定义为:“所有权是指所有人依法对自己的财产享有占有、使用、收益和处分的权     

走向世界中国水电施工企业准备好了吗?

２０００年９月１４日－２２日，国际大坝委员会第２０届会议和第６８届年会在北京举行。会议期间，国际大坝委员会主席霍格先生接受记者采访时这样说：“中国建坝的数量和坝工技术，世界领先”。毫无疑问，霍格先生的评价是中肯的。中国目前在大坝数量和技术上都处于世界领先地位。据《水力发电与大坝施工》（ＷａｔｅｒＰｏｗｅｒａｎｄＤａｍＣｏｎｓｔｒｕｃｔｉｏｎ）杂志统计，１９９８年世界在建的６０米以上的大坝约有２００座，而中国就有９０座，与大坝和水利水电建设有关的新产品、新技术都在中国得到应用。另据统计，目前中国已…     

Private value of European patents

I examine the joint patent designation-renewal behavior of the European Patent Office (EPO) patent applicants during 1978-1996, using both nonparametric techniques and a parametric model. The European patents granted through the EPO are substantially more valuable than those through the national route. Value distribution of patents is highly skewed, and even more so for the EPO patent families. The value of patent rights increases with the economic size of the country and exhibits modestly increasing returns to scale. Model estimation also reveals significant institutional differences across EPO member countries in patent protection.     

Valuation of patents in emerging economies: a renewal model-based study of Indian patents

ABSTRACT

This study uses patent renewal information to estimate the private value of patents. Patent value refers to the economic reward that the inventor extracts from commercialising the patented invention. Our empirical analysis comprises 555 patents with applications filed between 1999 and 2002. The term of these patents either ended in 2018 or lapsed due to non-payment of the renewal fee. We model the renewal decision of patentee as ordered probit where patent renewal fee increases with the age of the patent. Variables, such as patent family size, technological scope, number of inventors and grant lag, are used as explanatory variables in the corresponding regression. Hence, this paper combines the patentee’s renewal decision along with patents’ characteristics and renewal cost schedule to estimate the initial rent distribution. We find that a large number of patents expire at an early stage leaving few patents with high value corroborating the results of studies using European, American and Chinese data. As expected, patents from certain technology class enjoy high valuation.     

American hegemony after 11 September: allies,rivals and contradictions

11 September heralded and provided a pretext for a more aggressive but increasingly contradictory American hegemony. Some of the consequences are contrary to the United States' own interests. Its new doctrine of ‘preemptive strike’ against other sovereign states encourages similarly belligerent behaviour by other governments, and yet more terrorism by nonstate actors, the very threats which were to be eradicated by a re-asserted US hegemony. This essay focuses on three partly overlapping themes: different strategies towards allies – multilateral and unilateral; different forms of power – civil and military; and different ideologies of globalisation – neoliberal and neo-conservative. It argues that while US policy may oscillate between such poles, it often combines the different elements. The overall strategy of the Bush administration is best characterised as unilateral multilateralism. The main issue for US hegemonists is the ways in which their hegemony might best be exercised, maintained and strengthened vis à vis allies and rivals. But for a safer, more democratic world, the choice does not lie between one faction of US hegemonists and another: we need other alternatives such as cosmopolitan democracy and a genuine internationalist movement which would give it some much-needed substance.     

The patterns of patents in China

Innovations are a key driver of long-term economic growth. There has been an explosion of patent filings in China in the past three decades. But empirical studies on the pattern of innovations at the firm level are rather scant primarily due to lack of firm-specific patent data. We have made concerted efforts to match Chinese patent data with a large firm-level database. The matched dataset enables us to examine the patterns of patents at the firm level. Our analysis has revealed several interesting patterns: (1) domestic firms have become increasingly more innovative in terms of patent application; (2) private firms, rather than state-owned enterprises, have been the engine of innovation; (3) rising wages have propelled labor-intensive sectors to become more innovative; and (4) in response to increasing sex ratio imbalances, firms in female-intensive industries have exhibited more innovations than those in male-intensive industries.     

电视频道品牌建设的探索与思考

国内电视产业的激烈竞争,推进了各级电视媒体的频道品牌建设。本文从锁定观众、加强与广告主的长期稳定合作、培养知名主持人、打造优秀的制作团队和策划重大活动这五个方面,探索与思考了国内电视频道的品牌建设。     

Corporate patents and knowledge sourcing from universities

This paper provides empirical evidence on the link between different external knowledge sourcing strategies from universities and firms’ innovation output measured by the number of patent applications. Three strategies for acquiring external knowledge are distinguished: buying, cooperating and contracting out. The empirical model is based on the instrumental variable version of the ordered probit model. Geographical distance to local universities is employed as an instrument for the different knowledge sourcing strategies. The empirical results show that buying knowledge from universities is significantly positively related to the number of patent applications, while cooperating with universities and contracting out does not have an impact. This also holds for buying knowledge from domestic universities.     

R&D, patents and stock return volatility

Recent finance literature highlights the role of technological change in increasing firm specific (idiosyncratic) and aggregate stock return volatility, yet innovation data is not used in these analyses, leaving the direct relationship between innovation and stock return volatility untested. The paper investigates the relationship between volatility and innovation using firm level patent data. The analysis builds on the empirical work by Mazzucato (Rev Econ Dyn 5:318–345, 2002; J Evol Econ 13(5):491–512, 2003) where it is found that stock return volatility is highest during periods in the industry life-cycle when innovation is the most ‘radical’. In this paper we ask whether firms which invest more in innovation (more R&D and more patents) and/or which have more important innovations (patents with more citations) experience more volatility in their returns. Given that returns should in theory be higher, on average, for higher risk stocks, we also look at the effect of innovation on the level of returns. To take into account the competition between firms within industries, firm returns and volatility are measured relative to the industry average. We focus the analysis on firms in the pharmaceutical industry between 1974 and 1999. Results suggest that there is a positive and significant relationship between volatility, R&D intensity and the various patent related measures—especially when the innovation measures are filtered to distinguish the very innovative firms from the less innovate ones.     

The merits of new pollutants and how to get them when patents are granted

The performance of market based environmental regulation is affected by patents and vice versa. This interaction is studied for a type of innovation where a new technology reduces emissions of a specific pollutant but at the same time causes a new type of damage. If the new pollutant associated with this technology is sufficiently different from existing ones such that marginal damage is increasing in each of them but additive across pollutants, a diversification of the pollution portfolio is socially desirable. In a situation where the incentives to develop such a technology are created by patents, the efficiency of permits is affected by monopoly pricing of the patent-holding firm. This result carries over to other types of innovation. The performance of taxes is limited by either the inability to implement specific pollution mixes or monopoly pricing. For constant returns to scale at the industry level the combined use of taxes and permits ensures the first best mix of technologies and provides positive research incentives.      

Commercialization,renewal, and quality of patents

One of the major reasons why inventors are awarded patents by governments is they encourage R&D investments and commercialization of inventions. If the patent holder commercializes his/her invention, he/she has stronger incentives to retain the patent. The purpose here is to empirically analyze the relationship between commercialization and the renewal of patents. At the same time, I take into account defensive patent strategies (e.g. deterring competitors from utilizing the patent) and pointedly ask if there are any third factors (quality of the patent) that affect the commercialization and renewal decisions. Using a detailed database of Swedish patents, I utilize a survival model to estimate how commercialization influences the patent renewal decision. Basic results show not only that commercialization and defensive strategies increase the probability a patent will be renewed, but also that quality influences commercialization and renewal decisions. When controlling for the endogenous commercialization decision, there is still a strong positive relationship between commercialization and renewal of patents. Thus, given the quality of the patent, if the owner decides to commercialize the patent on the margin, this leads to longer survival of the patent. With regard to commercialization modes, there is some evidence that licensed patents and patents commercialized in original and new firms – but not acquired patents – survive longer than non-commercialized patents. Looking more closely at the contracts of acquired and licensed patents, contracts with both variable and fixed fees – but not contracts with either variable or fixed fees – survive longer than non-commercialized patents. However, the analysis about modes and contract terms does not take into account the endogeneity problem.     

Modelling and predicting the competitive effects of vertical mergers: The bargaining leverage over rivals effect

A new competitive effect of vertical mergers, based on the Nash bargaining model, has begun to play an important role in antitrust authorities’ evaluations of vertical mergers in the United States, Canada and abroad. The key idea is that a vertical merger will increase the bargaining leverage of the merged firm over its downstream rivals. Its bargaining leverage increases because it now takes into account the additional profit that its own downstream division will earn if it withholds inputs from downstream rivals, which changes its threat point in the bargaining game with downstream rivals. Consequently, the merged firm can increase the price that it charges rival downstream firms for inputs. One strong appeal of this theory is that it provides a simple and very intuitive formula to measure the upward pricing pressure caused by a vertical merger due to changes in bargaining leverage, based on variables whose values can generally be estimated using available data. This article describes this new competitive effect, which will be called the bargaining leverage over rivals (BLR) effect, and derives the upward pricing pressure formula. It also explains why this new competitive effect is distinct from the older raising rivals’ costs (RRC) effect that has been widely discussed in the economics literature, and discusses the relationship between the two different effects.     

Exploring technological resilience at the country level with patents

Resilience is critical to stabilise and reduce shocks and create advantages over competitors in environments with dramatic change and unexpected crises. There is no generally agreed-upon definition of technological resilience, and there is not yet a well-developed theory of technological resilience at the country level. The objective of this paper is to contribute to technological resilience research based on patent indicators by analyzing OECD countries’ technological resilience. This paper provides a framework to analyze the quality of selected patent indicators used for estimating technological crisis. More specifically, four sets of patent indicators, i.e. collaboration, knowledge, diversity, and legal protection, are employed to evaluate technological resilience, which is characterised as crisis probability, intensity, and duration. We found that higher technological coverage leads to higher crisis probability, more original technology leads to higher crisis intensity, and interpersonal collaboration enhances the chance of passing a crisis.     

Market value,R&D,and patents

A significant relationship is found between the market value of the firm and its ‘intangible’ capital, proxied by past R&D expenditures and the number of patents, based on a time-series cross-section analysis of data for large U.S. firms.     

Publicly-funded R&D programs and survival of patents

I apply a survival model to a detailed data set of Swedish patents to estimate how different financing factors affect the likelihood of patent renewal. Since the owners know more about the patents than potential external financiers, there is a problem of asymmetric information. To overcome this, Sweden has for a long time relied on government support rather than Private Venture Capital (PVC). In the empirical analysis, two kinds of government loans are unbundled. The empirical results show that patents which have received soft government loans in the R&D-phase have a higher probability of expiring than patents without such financing. But patents that have received more market-oriented government loans during the commercialization phase are renewed for as long as other commercialized patents. This finding suggests that rather than bad choices of projects, it is the nature of the contract terms that explains the low renewal of some patents with government financing.     

Scientific publications, patents and technological capabilities in late-industrializing countries

Investments in learning in late-industrializing countries have began to include outputs in the form of scientific publications and patents. We examine the patterns which these outputs take by correlating their growth rates with foreign investment, capital formation, R&D expenditures and other variables. We also analyze the scientfic fields of Publications. Where possible, we compare the patterns of latecomers with those af advanced countries, and try to assess whether there has been convergence or divergence in the number of patents and scientific publications over time.     

Industry-specific competencies and converging technological systems: evidence from patents

Utilising patent data, this empirical paper draws upon the notion of technological path-dependence at the industry level and finds that industry-specific competencies have endured strongly over the twentieth century — industrial sectors patent most in their corresponding technological fields, and differences in overall technological profiles remain quite marked. However, in an increasingly complex technological environment, paradigms developed within one industry may spill over into others as firms seek to absorb them. Eventually, after long periods of time the spillovers may become large as firms go beyond the development of new applications of their core technologies into the absorption of new modes of technological behaviour originally developed elsewhere. Technological profiles therefore show a pattern of ‘convergence’ under such conditions. Firms unable to attain this second stage of spillover may become ‘industrial dinosaurs’.