1,720,982 research outputs found
Underappreciated government research support in patents
No full textAlthough federally funded research plays a crucial role in driving innovation ( 1, 2 ), its contribution is underestimated when the US government's research support is not properly acknowledged in patents from an evaluation perspective. Moreover, because the US government is entitled to exercise patents arising from its research support for public safety or public health when the US government's involvement in patents is properly acknowledged, failure to document its research support in patents limits potential social benefits that a patented invention can realize through the US government's use. Analyzing about 84,000 US patent-paper pairs (PPPs), of the PPPs having patents on research outcomes originating from federal support, 28% did not acknowledge the US government's research support in the patents. Further findings imply that the private stake in the use of the research outcomes is negatively associated with the likelihood of acknowledging US government research support in patents.
The prevalence of weak patents in the United States: A new method to identify weak patents and the implications for patent policy
No full textThe presence of patents with dubious validity (i.e., weak patents) has been one of the prominent patent policy issues with undesirable consequences in innovation. The present study empirically examines the prevalence of weak patents in the United States and whether or not the current patent system is capable of correcting weak patent issues. To this end, we propose a new method to identify weak patents by using patent citation information in conjunction with the textual similarity between citing and cited patents. Our method, along with a series of internal validation measures, shows that 13% of U.S. patents filed from 2001 to 2010 are weak patents. By applying this new method, we find that patent owners build a patent portfolio around a weak patent by developing subsequent inventions more than they do for a non-weak patent. Our further analysis finds that a weak patent is more or equally likely to be retained by the patent owner than a non-weak patent. Our findings suggest that patent owners have an incentive to invest in maintaining and appropriating weak patents, and thus, the current patent system is incapable of self-correcting weak patent issues.
How does patent transfer affect innovation of firms?
No full textThe growth of the market for patents has drawn the attention of innovation management scholars and policymakers, especially regarding the impact this market may have on innovation. One of their prominent questions is whether firms exploit the market for patents to obtain strategic benefits over their market rivals rather than compete through the acquisition of technologies, which may aggravate ex-post patent holdup and increase the cost of innovation.,This study examines how a firm's acquisition of external patents affects its rival firms' innovation activity when a patent can be strategically utilized by the patent purchasing firm. Through our review of patent holdup literature and firms' strategic utilization of patents, we derive a hypothesis stating that a firm's patent purchase deters its rival firm's development of relevant technologies to that patent if the patent covers crucial technological input for its rival's market operation.,Our analysis uses Nortel's patent auction in 2011 and finds supportive evidence for the stated hypothesis. This paper discusses the differences between the nature of the market for patents from the market for technology and how we must incorporate such differences to formulate better innovation policies.,
Interdisciplinary knowledge integration as a unique knowledge source for technology development and the role of funding allocation
No full textThis study examines the relationship between interdisciplinarity in knowledge integration (interdisciplinarity) for research and the extent to which the research serves as a unique knowledge input for technology development. To understand the role of the funding allocation therein, we additionally examine how research funding allocation shapes this relationship. To this end, we develop a simple bibliometric method to measure the uniqueness of research impact on technology development by using paper-patent citation network information. Our analysis of the metadata of over 0.7 million journal papers published in 2010 shows that the interdisciplinarity of research is positively associated with uniqueness in its contribution to technology development only when the research has funding support. We also find that interdisciplinarity in knowledge integration is positively associated with the non-unique impact of research on technology development regardless of funding support. Our findings suggest that interdisciplinary research may serve as a unique knowledge source for technology development, while the funding allocation process functions as an institutional instrument for selectively supporting interdisciplinary research that could have a unique technology impact. We discuss implications for science policymakers, research evaluators, and technology firms.
Transfer of university patents and its impact on follow-on invention
No full textThis study examines the effects of granting firms exclusive rights to use university inventions on the creation of follow-on inventions. By analyzing a dataset of transferred patents from research universities to firms in the USA between 2000 and 2013, we find that allowing firms to exclusively utilize university inventions through patent transfers leads to an increase in follow-on inventions among patent nonrecipients. However, we find no evidence of an impact on the patent recipient's follow-on inventions. Our analysis also shows evidence of a positive impact of the transfer of patents on government-funded inventions on the rate of follow-on inventions by nonrecipients of the university patents. This research contributes to the ongoing debate regarding the necessity of granting firms the exclusive right to use university knowledge to foster innovation.
Prominence of corporate science in quantum computing research
No full textIn this study, we empirically examined the growing prominence of corporate science and its influence on quantum computing research. An analysis of approximately 30,000 research papers on quantum computing revealed that firms are increasingly publishing scientifically impactful research compared to noncorporate entities in this field. Additional analyses of text data from research article abstracts using topic modeling indicated that corporate research is concentrated on prominent topics such as quantum computing for Machine Learning/ Artificial Intelligence and quantum algorithms, attracting increasing scholarly attention. In contrast, noncorporate research has been relatively dispersed across various topics. Drawing on the Resource-Based View and insights from an interview with a field expert, we theorize that with secured access to unique and rare resources for quantum computing research, corporate researchers are better positioned to experiment and iterate on novel ideas than their noncorporate counterparts. The publication of these research outcomes provides strategic advantages without compromising their appropriability. Our findings have implications for science policymakers and corporate innovation strategists, contributing to the literature on the role of corporate research in scientific progress.
Incentive or disincentive for research data disclosure? A large-scale empirical analysis and implications for open science policy
No full textWhen researchers disclose their original data, they can enhance the visibility of their research works and gain more academic credits (credit effect). By contrast, doing so may accelerate the knowledge replacement process, which dissipates the academic credit that their research works may have received (competition effect). In this study, we examine whether and the extent to which scientists gain academic credit for their research works by publicly disclosing their data. Our review of various literature hypothesizes that data-disclosing research gains more academic credit than non-data-disclosing research in the short term. However, this difference gradually disappears and reverses as the competition effect emerges. This pattern is expected to systematically differ depending on the academic reputation of the journals where the data-disclosing research is published. We empirically test the derived hypotheses by analyzing the metadata of over 310,000 Web of Science Core Collection (WoS CC)-indexed journal articles published in 2010. Our analysis supports both hypotheses. The present study contributes to the on-going policy discussion about the need for institutional measures to promote disclosure of research data by scientists.
Defensive Patent Aggregators as Shields against Patent Assertion Entities? Theoretical and Empirical Analysis
No full textDefensive Patent Aggregators (DPA) are a new patent intermediary that aims to counter the threat of Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) to technology practicing firms by preempting patents that can be utilized by PAEs. In this study, we investigate whether and to what extent DPAs are in competition with PAEs for patent aggregation.,In our theoretical analysis, we develop a game theoretic model that illustrates the selection of patents for aggregation by DPAs and PAEs, and derive four testable hypotheses regarding differences between the DPAs and PAEs aggregated patents. The model shows that DPAs are unlikely to be in complete competition with PAEs for patent aggregation and there are systematic differences in the characteristics of patents acquired by PAEs and DPAs. Our empirical analysis using U.S. patents aggregated by large PAEs and DPAs from 2008 to 2014 presents corroborating evidence for our hypotheses. Our findings imply that DPAs' patent preemption business model alone may not be sufficient to mitigate the threat of PAEs for technology firms, and point to the important role of public policy intervention. We discuss implications for technology firms and policymakers who seek to establish state-run DPAs.,
Collaboration in innovation: An empirical test of Varieties of Capitalism
No full textDo country-level institutions drive firm-level collaboration in invention? Hall and Soskice's (2001) Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) contends that the institutional configurations of modern capitalist economies push organizations towards country-specific behavioral patterns in terms of collaboration frequency and duration. In this article, we first extract these claims from the VoC literature and then test them in the empirical setting of collaboration in invention. Towards this end, we construct an original dataset of patents and employ a novel metric of historical collaboration stickiness. We find strong support in favor of Hall and Soskice's prediction that inter-firm collaboration will be more common within coordinated-market economies. However, the VoC claim that organizations within coordinated-market economies will form more durable collaborative relationships than those formed within liberal-market economies does not hold up to empirical scrutiny.
How institutional arrangements in the National Innovation System affect industrial competitiveness: A study of Japan and the US with multiagent simulation
No full textThe institutionalized long-term business relationships among Japan's (JP's) innovating players have been indicated as a weakness of JP's National Innovation System (NIS) compared with that of the U.S.,This study examines how this institutionalized business relationship practice determines the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. and JP's NIS using agent-based modeling and simulation. Our analysis reveals that the JP NIS is at an advantage in an industry where consumer demand changes rapidly and incremental innovation is crucial. In contrast, the U.S. NIS benefits an industry where frequent radical innovation is required. Furthermore, we show that heavy reliance on in-house R&D is advantageous over open-innovation practice in an industry where radical innovation is crucial when long-term business relationships are prominent. Based on the simulation results, we draw conclusions including strategic and policy implications for JP firms and policymakers, respectively. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.,
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