The Influence of Strategic Patenting on Companies’ Patent Portfolios

This paper analyses whether strategic motives for patenting influence the characteristics of companies’ patent portfolios. We use the number of citations and oppositions to represent these characteristics. The investigation is based on survey and patent data from German companies. We find clear evidence that the companies’ patenting strategies explain the characteristics of their patent portfolios. First, companies using patents to protect their technological knowledge base receive a higher number of citations for their patents. Second, the motive of offensive – but not of defensive – blocking is related to a higher incidence of oppositions, whereas companies using patents as bartering chips in collaborations receive fewer oppositions to their patents

International patent families: from application strategies to statistical indicators

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the characteristics of international patent families, including their domestic component. We exploit a relatively under-studied feature of patent families, namely the number of patents covering the same invention within a given jurisdiction. Using this information, we highlight common patterns in the structure of international patent families, which reflect both the patenting strategies of innovators and the peculiarities of the different patent systems. While the literature has extensively used family size, i.e. the number of countries in which a given invention is protected, as a measure of patent value, our results suggest that the number of patent filings in the priority country within a patent family as well as the timespan between the first and last fillings within a family are other insightful indicators of the value of patented innovations

THE INSTITUTIONAL SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE VALUE OF ACADEMIC PATENTS

This paper puts forward new potential determinants of patent value which are related to the identification of institutional sources of knowledge and the geographic scope of patenting strategy. The impact of these new indicators is evaluated through an empirical analysis that aims to explain the number of forward citations received by 208 patent families applied for by six Belgian universities. The new indicators provide a more in-depth understanding of the way non-patent citations, backward patent citations, co-assignees and the geographical scope for protection determine patent value. The policy implications induced by these results are the positive impact of collaboration between public research organisations and the need to focus on academic researchers with a high scientific profile in terms of publications in order to crystallize their tacit knowledge into high value academic patents.Patent value, Patent indicators, knowledge sources,

Entrepreneurial Effectiveness of European Universities: An empirical assessment of antecedents and trade-offs

The phenomenon of entrepreneurial universities has received considerable attention over the last decades. An entrepreneurial orientation by academia might put regions and nations in an advantageous position in emerging knowledge-intensive fields of economic activity. At the same time, such entrepreneurial orientation requires reconciliation with the scientific missions of academia. Large-scale empirical research on antecedents of the entrepreneurial effectiveness of universities is scarce. This contribution examines the extent to which scientific productivity affect entrepreneurial effectiveness, taking into account the size of universities and the presence of disciplines, as well as the R&D intensity of the regional business environment (BERD). In addition, we assess the occurrence of trade-offs between different transfer mechanisms (contract research, patenting and spin off activity). The data used pertain to 105 European universities. Our findings reveal that scientific productivity is positively associated with entrepreneurial effectiveness. Trade-offs between transfer mechanisms do not reveal themselves; on the contrary, contract research and spin off activities tend to facilitate each other. Limitations and implications for future research are discusse

Knowledge diffusion from university and public research. A comparison between US, Japan and Europe using patent citations

University patents, Citations, Spillovers, Knowledge diffusion, Public research, O30, O33, O34,

Patent application in biotechnology at subclass C12N in Brazil at the period of 2001 to 2005

An analysis of Instituto Nacional de Propriedade Industrial (INPI) patent database from 2001 to 2005 showed that less than 5% of the total patent deposited in the subclass C12N, which referred to "Microorganisms or Enzymes, Compositions thereof, Propagating, Preserving or Maintaining Microorganisms, Mutation or Genetic Engineering, Culture Media", were from national depositors. In contrast, more than 34% of all these deposits came from the United States of America during the same period. Among the national depositors, public universities and government research institutions contributed with 83% over all the deposits, demonstrating that research and development in the field of Biotechnology in Brazil has been concentrated within Brazilian public institutions during this period

A brief history of space and time: the scope-year index as a patent value indicator based on families and renewals

The renewal of patents and their geographical scope for protection constitute two essential dimensions in a patent’s life, and probably the most frequently used patent value indicators. The intertwining of these dimensions (the geographical scope of protection may vary over time) makes their analysis complex, as any measure along one dimension requires an arbitrary choice on the second. This paper proposes a new indicator of patent value, the Scope-Year index, combining the two dimensions. The index is computed for patents filed at the EPO from 1980 to 1996 and validated in its member states. It shows that the average value of patent filings has increased in the early eighties but has constantly decreased from the mid-eighties until the mid nineties, despite the institutional expansion of the EPO. This result sheds a new and worrying light on the worldwide boom in patent filings.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Access to universities’ public knowledge: who’s more nationalist?

[EN] Access to public knowledge is a prerequisite for the good functioning of developed economies. Universities strive and are also requested to contribute to this knowledge both locally and internationally. Traditional studies on the geography of knowledge flows have identified a localisation effect; however, these studies do not use the country as the unit of observation and hence do not explore national patterns. In this paper, we hypothesise that the localisation of university knowledge flows is directly related to share of firm expenditure on research and development. To test this hypothesis, we use references to universities in patent documents as indicators based on a data set of around 20,000 university references, for 37 countries in the period 1990–2007, resulting in panels of around 300–500 observations. We build indicators for the university knowledge flows both inside and outside the applicant country, which we explain as a function of some proxies for national size and research structure based on econometric estimations. We draw some conclusions as to the importance of national business scientific strength for fostering increased domestic university knowledge flows.This research was initiated with the framework of ERAWATCH, a joint initiative of the European Commission's Directorate General for Research and the Joint Research Centre-Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS). The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission (EC). Neither the EC nor anyone acting on behalf of the EC is responsible for the use that might be made of the information. I am grateful to Rene van Bavel and Xabier Goenaga for their support and to Laura de Dominicis for exchange of ideas. 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