The Impact of Uncertain Intellectual Property Rights on the Market For Ideas: Evidence From Patent Grant Delays

This paper considers the impact of the intellectual property (IP) system on the timing of cooperation/licensing by start-up technology entrepreneurs. If the market for technology licenses is efficient, the timing of licensing is independent of whether IP has already been granted. In contrast, the need to disclosure 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 dataset combining information about cooperative licensing and the timing of patent allowances (the administrative event when patent rights are clarified). While pre-allowance 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 seems to play a particularly important role for technologies with longer technology lifecycles or that lack alternative mechanisms such as copyright, reputation, or brokers. The findings suggest that imperfections in the market for ideas may be important, and that formal IP rights may facilitate gains from technological trade.

When Does Start-Up Innovation Spur the Gale of Creative Destruction?

This paper is motivated by the substantial differences in start-up commercialization strategies observed across different high-technology sectors. Specifically, we evaluate the conditions under which start-up innovators earn their returns on innovation through product market competition with more established firms (such as in many areas of the electronics industry) as opposed to cooperation with these incumbents (either through licensing, strategic alliances or outright acquisition as observed in the pharmaceutical industry). While the former strategy challenges incumbent market power, the latter strategy tends to reinforce current market structure. Though the benefits of cooperation include forestalling the costs of competition in the product market and avoiding duplicative investment in sunk assets, imperfections in the market for ideas' may lead to competitive behavior in the product market. Specifically, if the transaction costs of bargaining are high or incumbents are likely to expropriate ideas from start-up innovators, then product market competition is more likely. We test these ideas using a novel dataset of the commercialization strategies of over 100 start-up innovators. Our principal robust findings are that the probability of cooperation is increasing in the innovator's control over intellectual property rights, association with venture capitalists (which reduce their transactional bargaining costs), and in the relative cost of control of specialized complementary assets. Our conclusion is that the propensity for pro-competitive benefits from start-up innovators reflects an earlier market failure, in the market for ideas.'

Quantum gravity at a TeV and the renormalization of Newton's constant

We examine whether renormalization effects can cause Newton¿s constant to change dramatically with energy, perhaps even reducing the scale of quantum gravity to the TeV region without the introduction of extra dimensions. We examine a model that realizes this possibility and describe experimental signatures from the production of small black holes

The Impact of Uncertain Intellectual Property Rights on the Market for Ideas: Evidence from Patent Grant Delays

This paper considers the impact of the intellectual property (IP) system on the timing of cooperation/licensing by start-up technology entrepreneurs. If the market for technology licenses is efficient, the timing of licensing 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 technology life cycles or that lack alternative appropriation mechanisms such as copyright, reputation, or brokers. The findings suggest that imperfections in the market for ideas may be important, and that formal IP rights may facilitate gains from technological trade

Unitarity and the Hilbert space of quantum gravity

Under the premises that physics is unitary and black hole evaporation is complete (no remnants, no topology change), there must exist a one-to-one correspondence between states on future null and timelike infinity and on any earlier spacelike Cauchy surface (e.g., slices preceding the formation of the hole). We show that these requirements exclude a large set of semiclassical spacetime configurations from the Hilbert space of quantum gravity. In particular, the highest entropy configurations, which account for almost all of the volume of semiclassical phase space, would not have quantum counterparts, i.e. would not correspond to allowed states in a quantum theory of gravity.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, revtex; minor changes in v2 (version published in Class. Quant. Grav.

Are the immuno-stimulatory properties of Lenalidomide extinguished by co-administration of Dexamethasone?

Dexamethasone has been a mainstay of anti-myeloma therapy for 20 years. However, it is intensely immunosuppressive and may limit the efficacy of the immune system to control myeloma, and limit the exciting opportunities to use immune stimulating drug therapies such as Lenalidomide to maximize the fight against this disease

Dynamic Commercialization Strategies for Disruptive Technologies: Evidence from the Speech Recognition Industry

When start-up innovation involves a potentially disruptive technology—initially lagging in the predominant performance metric, but with a potentially favorable trajectory of improvement—incumbents may be wary of engaging in cooperative commercialization with the start-up. While the prevailing theory of disruptive innovation suggests that this will lead to (exclusively) competitive commercialization and the eventual replacement of incumbents, we consider a dynamic strategy involving product market entry before switching to a cooperative commercialization strategy. Empirical evidence from the automated speech recognition industry from 1952 to 2010 confirms our main hypothesis.Wharton School. Mack Institute for Innovation ManagementSloan School of Management (Roberts E-Center Fund

Dynamic Commercialization Strategies for Disruptive Technologies: Evidence From the Speech Recognition Industry

When start-up innovation involves a potentially disruptive technology—initially lagging in the predominant performance metric, but with a potentially favorable trajectory of improvement—incumbents may be wary of engaging in cooperative commercialization with the start-up. While the prevailing theory of disruptive innovation suggests that this will lead to (exclusively) competitive commercialization and the eventual replacement of incumbents, we consider a dynamic strategy involving product market entry before switching to a cooperative commercialization strategy. Empirical evidence from the automated speech recognition industry from 1952 to 2010 confirms our main hypothesis