Appropriability and the timing of innovation: Evidence from MIT inventions (original) (raw)
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Appropriability and Commercialization: Evidence from MIT Inventions
Management Science, 2008
At least since , the effects of appropriability on invention have been well studied, but there has been little analysis of the effect of appropriability on the commercialization of existing inventions. Exploiting a database of 805 attempts by private firms to commercialize inventions licensed from MIT between 1980 and 1996, we explore the influence of several appropriability mechanisms on the commercialization and termination of projects to develop products based on university inventions. We construct a theoretical model in which the licensee faces technical and market uncertainty, and anticipates that its products will be imitated.
The decision to patent, cumulative innovation, and optimal policy
International Journal of Industrial Organization, 2005
Optimal patent breadth is an issue that is still being vigorously debated at both the theoretical and empirical levels. This paper analyzes optimal patent policy in the context of cumulative innovation in a model that endogenizes the patenting decisions of early innovators. In the theoretical literature on cumulative innovation, it is generally assumed that all innovations are patented. However, studies such as Cohen et al. (2000) and Levin et al. (1987) report that firms frequently rely on secrecy to protect their discoveries. Cumulative innovation implies that innovators may have significant incentives to keep their innovations secret to get a head start in subsequent R&D races. This paper shows that if innovators cannot rely on secrecy to protect their innovations, it is optimal to have relatively narrow patent protection. This happens if the government has a weak trade secret policy or if innovators cannot monitor the flow of their technological information. This is because when innovators cannot rely on secrecy to protect their innovations, they have increased incentives to patent them and it is not necessary for the government to give them extra incentives to patent. In the case when innovators always prefer secrecy over patenting, it becomes optimal to have a flexible antitrust policy rather than a flexible patent policy. Since non-disclosure reduces the investment incentives in the second R&D race, allowing collusive licensing agreements between competing innovators becomes optimal in order to stimulate investment in the second R&D race.
The economics of patents: from natural rights to policy instruments
2013
This paper uses latest advances in economic research for examining recent changes in patent regimes aimed at strengthening patent protection, and beyond that, for rethinking the rationale of the patent system. Considering that economic theory does not regard patents as a natural right that should be systematically granted to inventors, but as a policy instrument aimed at fostering innovation and diffusion, three major implications can be drawn from economic theory regarding current policy debates. First, patents may not be the most effective means of protection for inventors to recover R&D investments when imitation is costly and first mover advantages are important. Moreover, they may do more bad than good to innovation if innovation is cumulative and first generation inventions are essential to develop further inventions, especially when patent protection is strong. Patents should not be seen as the solution by default, notably as regards new areas of patentability such as software, business methods and genetic inventions. Second, patentability requirements, such as novelty or non-obviousness, should be sufficiently stringent to avoid the grant of patents for inventions with low social value that increase the social cost of the patent system. Third, rather than the statutory patent life, what matters is the effective life of patents: the broader is a patent the longer is its effective life. Policy instruments affecting patent breadth (e.g. extra fee for independent claims above a certain threshold) and length (e.g. renewal fees) could be used to provide long effective lives to inventions with high social value. Beyond these currently debated issues, economic theory pleads for an in-depth reshuffling of the patent system. If the system were to be radically changed, an optimal patent policy could be based on a multidimensional menu of different degrees of patent protection associated to different patent fees, where stronger protection would correspond to higher fees. Patents could be transformed into self-selection mechanisms whereby patentees reveal the economic characteristics of their inventions, compensate society for the protection they are granted and obtain sufficient incentives to innovate.
An Empirical Study of University Patent Activity
SSRN Electronic Journal
Since 1980, a series of legislative acts and judicial decisions have affected the ownership, scope, and duration of patents. These changes have coincided with historic increases in patent activity among academic institutions. This article presents an empirical study of how changes to patent policy precipitated responses by academic institutions, using spline regression functions to model their patent activity. We find that academic institutions typically reduced patent activity immediately before changes to the patent system, and increased patent activity immediately afterward. This is especially true among research universities. In other words, academic institutions responded to patent incentives in a strategic manner, consistent with firm behavior, by reacting to the preferences of internal coalitions to capture unrealized economic value in intellectual property.
Patents and Innovation: Evidence from Economic History
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2013
What is the optimal system of intellectual property rights to encourage innovation? Empirical evidence from economic history can help to inform important policy questions that have been difficult to answer with modern data: For example, does the existence of strong patent laws encourage innovation? What proportion of innovations is patented? Is this share constant across industries and over time? How does patenting affect the diffusion of knowledge? How effective are prominent mechanisms, such as patent pools and compulsory licensing, that have been proposed to address problems with the patent system? This essay summarizes results of existing research and highlights promising areas for future research.
2016
the timing of licens-ing is independent of whether IP has already been granted. In contrast, the need to disclose complementary (yet unprotected) knowledge, asymmetric information or search costs may retard efficient technology transfer. In these cases, reductions in uncertainty surrounding the scope and extent of IP rights may facilitate trade in the market for ideas. We employ a data set combining information about cooperative licensing and the timing of patent allowances (the administrative event when patent rights are clarified). Although preallowance licensing does occur, the hazard rate for achieving a cooperative licensing agreement significantly increases after patent allowance. Moreover, the impact of the patent system depends on the strategic and institutional environment in which firms operate. Patent allowance plays a particularly important role for technologies with longer technol-ogy life cycles or that lack alternative appropriation mechanisms such as copyright, reput...
How Valuable is Patent Protection?: Estimates by Technology Field
Social Science Research Network, 1998
How valuable is patent protection? Estimates by technology field Mark Schankerman* I present evidence on the private value of patent rights in France for different technology fields and nationalities of ownership, using nonparametric techniques and a parametric model of patent renewal. The distribution of the value of patent rights is highly skewed, patent protection is a significant but not the major source of private returns to R&D, and these characteristics vary across technology fields. I compute the R&D cash subsidy that is equivalent to the value of patent rights, measure the variations in value over time, technology fields, and nationalities, and show that these differences are correlated with patent grant rates.