The Light and Shade of Knowledge Recombination: A Systematic Look at the Bioinformatics Patent Scenario

This research focuses on a special case of General Purpose Technology: Bioinformatics. It explores whether – and to what extent – Bioinformatics inventions build upon inherently diverse knowledge sources. Precisely, the role of scientific and technological diversity (measured with Shannon-Wiener diversity index) as driver of impactful Bioinformatics inventions (measured at different standard deviations of the forward citations distribution) is investigated. To this purpose, we carried out an analysis of both Non-Patent and Patent references cited into Bioinformatics patented inventions in the period 1976-2014. Results from a series of logistic regression models indicate that different degrees of impact require different degrees of knowledge diversity; at the same time, and importantly for practitioners and scholars, recombining diverse scientific and technological knowledge bases not always lead to impactful inventions. In other terms: the interplay of science and technology is not always the best option to get impactful inventions

Defensive Publishing An Empirical Study

Defensive Publishing denotes publication of an invention with the purpose of creating prior art, and thus preventing patents being granted on this invention. Although widely employed, it has hardly been investigated empirically. Our study is based on 56 in-depth interviews, among others with most industrial firms in the German DAX 30 stock index. We find that 70 percent of the companies in our sample use defensive publications, for up to one third of their inventions. Interestingly, we find that the patent system itself is frequently used for defensive publishing. Our findings also challenge contributions connecting defensive publishing to patent races.Defensive publication, Intellectual property, Freedom to operate, Patens

Patents, knowledge creation, and spillovers in genetics for agriculture and natural resources

Includes bibliographical references.2020 Summer.Increasing food, energy, and resource demand by growing global population is putting unprecedented pressure on agriculture and natural resource systems. Innovation in agriculture, energy, and other resource intensive industries contributes enormously to productivity and sustainability gains. Innovation in genetic resources and biological systems is a particularly promising yet controversial area of such innovation. Generally, it has been observed that regional clustering (economies of agglomeration) plays an important role in driving innovation. To what extent do we observe regional clustering to play a role in innovation in these industries? Especially given that production is highly diffused geographically, and research and technology are seen as highly globalized (global public goods vs. global monopolies by MNCs). The overarching questions address by this study are the following: (1) What do patents reveal about geographic patterns of knowledge creation and spillovers? (2) What economic and policy factors drive invention activity at the regional scale? And indirectly, (3) What is the role of regional clustering in driving innovations for food security and sustainability? To address these overarching objectives this study is mainly separated into three parts. The first part delves into three related questions: (1) How have biological inventions for use in primary resource-intensive industries been spatially distributed across the United States? And, in particular, to what degree have they been geographically concentrated? (2) What are the time-space dynamics of biological inventions for these industries? To what extent does the concentration of previous inventions effect where new inventions arise? And, (3) based on these insights, can we identify primary innovation clusters in the U.S. for these industries? This study draws on detailed information on inventor address from about 34,000 patented inventions as indicators of innovation and entrepreneurship in three closely related industries: (1) agriculture, (2) bioenergy, and (3) environmental management. To address these questions three approaches are used mapping, Moran I and regression analysis. Results indicate these biological inventions are distributed across the U.S, but highly concentrated clusters are formed in urban regions. Moreover, a spatial clustering pattern clearly exists. In term of concentration of biological inventions for these industries, a rural-urban division exists. Inventions do not tend to concentrate near production activities but tend to concentrate in urban area. The number of inventions in an area in prior years has a significant impact on the number of current year inventions. This relationship represents the localized spillover phenomenon. While we do see inventions in rural areas, rural areas do not appear to be the hotspots of innovation in agricultural, energy, or environmental biotechnologies. The second part of this dissertation explores the covariates of regional concentration of these biological inventions for agriculture, energy, and environment in the United States. First, the geographic patterns of these inventions are analyzed using negative binomial panel regression of patented inventions by region, to identify the density of inventions overall as well as the space-time dynamics of invention cumulativeness. We find that inventions have been spatially concentrated in about 30 major metropolitan clusters, and that spatial distribution has remained remarkably stable over time. Factors of population, earnings, and farm income are correlated with their invention counts. As a first rule, these inventions are created in higher population urban regions. Although, among regions of similar population inventions are more likely closer to agricultural production. Results clearly show the emergence of largely urban innovation clusters in agriculture and resource industries. The third part of this dissertation broadens the scope to explore the spatial distribution and covariates of regional invention activity across Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Three approaches are used mapping, Moran I and regression analysis to analyse the spatial distribution and covariates across OECD. The results showed that while inventions are distributed across the OECD, there again appear to be concentrated clusters in larger urban regions (another broader set of top 30 clusters). Moreover, the number of inventions made in prior years has significant explanatory power on the number of current year inventions, by region. This represents the localized spillover phenomenon. In addition, region size (as measured by population) and level of economic activity (as measured by regional income) do not appear to be related to the count of inventions for these industries. R&D expenditures (regional) and an IP index (which is national in nature but is applied to regions for this study) are strongly related to biotech invention activity for these industries. A rural-urban division does appear to exist. Finally, these invention counts appear to be negatively correlated with gross value added of agriculture by region across OECD countries

The R&D process in the US and Japan: Major findings from the RIETI-Georgia Tech Inventor Survey

RIETI Discussion PaperThis paper analyzes and compares the objective, the nature and the performance of R&D projects in the US and Japan, based on the first large scale systematic survey of inventors, focusing on the R&D projects yielding triadic patents. Major findings are the following. First, the projects for enhancing the existing business line of a firm account for a large share of R&D projects in both countries, confirming the view that the R&D investment is significantly conditioned by the existing complementary asset of a firm. In both countries, the inventions from R&D for existing business have the highest in-house utilization rate but use least the scientific and technical literature for their conceptions, while the reverse is the case for the inventions from R&D for new technology base (or for cultivating seeds). R&D projects for enhancing the technology base are much more common in the US. This difference can be partly accounted for by US inventors being more likely to have a PhD, but not by the differences in the structure of finance. US government financial support is relatively more targeted to projects for existing business and US venture capital provides support mainly projects for creating new business (6% of them), but not for more upstream projects. Only about 20-30% of the projects are for process innovation in both countries, providing direct evidence for the earlier findings that were based on US patent information. Product innovation generates process patents more often in Japan than in the US (25% vs. 10%), while product innovation projects are relatively more numerous in Japan. In both countries a significant share of inventions (more than 20%) were not the result of an R&D project, and a substantial proportion of such inventions are valued among the top 10% of patents, suggesting that R&D expenditure significantly underestimates inventive activities. A US invention is more often an unexpected by-product of an R&D project (11%) than in Japan (3.4%). The two countries have surprisingly similar distributions of R&D projects in man month and the average team size. In both countries, smaller firms tend to have relatively more high-value patents. In the US, inventors from very small firms (with less than 100 employees) and universities jointly account for more than one quarter of the top 10% inventions, even though they account for only 14% of all inventions. Man-months expended for an invention has a significant correlation with the performance of the R&D projects for existing business, less so for new business and not at all for those enhancing the technology base,suggesting substantial heterogeneity by project types in the determinants of the performance and in the uncertainty. A PhD has a significant correlation with R&D project performance especially for new business

Does foreign environmental policy influence domestic innovation? Evidence from the wind industry

This paper examines the relative influence of domestic and foreign renewable energy policies on innovation activity in wind power using patent data from OECD countries from 1994 to 2005. We distinguish between the impact of demand-pull policies (e.g., guaranteed tariffs, investment and production tax credits), as reflected by wind power capacities installed annually, and technology-push policies (government support to R&D). We show that inventors respond to both domestic and foreign new capacities by increasing their innovation effort. However, the effect on innovation of the marginal wind turbine installed at home is 28 times stronger than that of the foreign marginal wind turbine. Unlike demand-pull policies, public R&D expenditures only affect domestic inventors. A simple calculation suggests that the marginal million dollars spent on R&D support generates 0.82 new inventions, whereas the same amount spent on the deployment of wind turbines induces, at best, 0.06 new inventions (0.03 locally and 0.03 abroad)

Innovativeness of the US economy. Permanent or weakening dominance?

The paper is divided into three parts. In the first one, main causes of American leadership in the field of technology are explained. In the second part, innovation performance of the US economy in comparison with the EU and Asian economies is presented. Finally, there is an analysis of innovation capacity of US economy in the context of challenges resulting from the financial and economic crisis.Strukturę opracowania można przedstawić następująco: po wprowadzeniu dokonano charakterystyki głównych czynników i procesów, które przyczyniły się do powstania dominacji gospodarki Stanów Zjednoczonych w dziedzinie innowacyjności, następnie poddano analizie zjawisko zmniejszania się przewagi innowacyjnej tej gospodarki nad resztą świata, a w dalszej kolejności skoncentrowano uwagę na zagadnieniu wpływu współczesnego kryzysu gospodarczego na perspektywy utrzymania przewagi technologicznej Stanów Zjednoczonych

Out of Date. Remarks on the 1951 “Index of Books to be Immediately Excluded”

This article seeks to identify some of the uses of „the index of books to be immediately excluded” issued by the Ministry of Culture and Arts in 1951. At that time, decrees of the sort specified inventories of books permitted to be included on the shelves of Polish. In the process, many books were to be removed for good both from libraries and from native heritage. Addition­ally, the procedure of “purification”, as it was called by the officials, bore significant similarities to the repressive practices of the German and Russian occupants used during WWII. The author argues that analogies were drawn wittingly or impulsively at least for the effectiveness of German and Russian inventions. The 1951 list of books forbidden for the Polish common reader offers their obsolete character as the reason for exclusion. Up to date did not mean “contemporary” but up to the demands of state authorities. Administrative pressure to reflect the political agenda converted books into somewhat fatter newspapers and in this way seriously damaged book, which had always been the important vehicle of national and cultural memory

Tracing Mobile Inventors – The Causality between Inventor Mobility and Inventor Productivity

This paper analyzes the causality between inventor productivity and inventor mobility. The results show that the level of education has no influence on inventor productivity. Making use of external sources of knowledge, on the contrary, has a significant effect on productivity. Finally, firm size has a positive impact on productivity. Firm size also influences inventor mobility, although negatively. Whereas existing research implicitly assumes causality to point in one direction, this study ex-ante allows for a simultaneous relationship. To deal with the expected endogeneity problem, instrumental variables techniques will be employed. Results show that mobile inventors are more than four times as productive as non-movers. Whereas mobility increases productivity, an increase in productivity decreases the number of moves