What do you mean by "mobile"? Multi-applicant inventors in the European Bio-Technology Industry

Many recent papers dealing with the issue of knowledge spillovers have relied on patent data to extract information on so-called mobile inventors that is inventors designated by patent applications filed by different companies. In this paper we follow in this tradition, but with the aim of setting straight a number of methodological issues. By making use of information on the identity and history of those applicants, we then propose a taxonomy of the phenomena behind multi-applicant inventorship, which distinguishes between job mobility, mobility as a result of M&As, a case which we suspect to be dominated by the markets for research and for technologies, and residuals cases. We then argue that different multi-applicant inventors’ categories have to do with different patterns of knowledge diffusion, which include both spillovers and markets for technology.Patents, mobile inventors, multi-applicant inventorship, knowledge diffusion

Knowledge spillovers and local innovation systems: a critical survey

The paper re-examines critically the growing literature on localised knowledge spillovers (LKSs), and finds the econometric evidence on the subject still lacking of a firm theoretical background, especially in respect of the more recent developments in the economics of knowledge. Therefore such evidence, and even more the concept itself of LKS, should not be read as supportive of new industrial geographers' work on industrial districts, hi-tech agglomerations and 'milieux innovateur'. On the contrary, it may represent a threat to the necessary efforts for gaining more theoretical rigour and getting more empirical fieldwork done. Key words: knowledge, innovation, spillovers, externalities, regional agglomeration. JEL classification: D62, O30, R12

Small Worlds in Networks of Inventors and the Role of Science: An Analysis of France.

· Using data on patent applications at European Patent Office, we examine the structural properties of networks of inventors in France in different technologies, and how they depend from the inventive activity of scientists from universities and public research organizations (PROs). We revisit earlier findings on small world properties of social networks of inventors, and propose more rigorous tests of such hypothesis. We find that academic and PRO inventors contribute significantly to patenting in science‐based fields. Such contribution is decisive for the emergence of small world properties.networks, inventors, academic patenting, small world.

Institutional Change and Academic Patenting: French Universities and the Innovation Act of the 1999.

Recent empirical work in the field of university-industry technology transfer has stressed the importance of IPR-related reforms and university patenting has major forces behind the success of US high-tech industry. European policy-makers have been tempted to explain the poorer technological performance of their countries with the lower propensity of their academic institutions to get engaged in patenting and commercializing their research results. As a consequence, a number of measures have been taken to promote academic awareness of IPRs, as part of more comprehensive policies in favour of academic commercialization and entrepreneurship. This paper explores university patenting, and the related policies, in France. We provide evidence that university patenting in that countries has been underestimated by policy-makers’ perceptions: French academic scientists are in fact responsible for no less than 3% of patents by French inventors at the European Patent Office. However, only 10% of academic-invented patents are owned by domestic universities, with the remainder assigned both to firms and to Public Research Organizations (PROs). We then explore the impact of the Innovation Act, passed in France in 1999. We find that the Act has significantly increased the likelihood an academic patent to be assigned to a university rather than to a business company. We also find, that the opening of a technology transfer office in a university appears to have a stronger and more significant impact than the Act on the decision of universities to retain IPRs over their scientists’ discoveries.

Academic Patenting in Europe: New Evidence from the KEINS Database.

The paper provides summary statistics from the KEINS database on academic patenting in France, Italy, and Sweden. It shows that academic scientists in those countries have signed many more patents than previously estimated. This re‐evaluation of academic patenting comes by considering all patents signed by academic scientists active in 2004, both those assigned to universities and the many more held by business companies, governmental organizations, and public laboratories. Specific institutional features of the university and research systems in the three countries contribute to explain these ownership patterns, which are remarkably different from those observed in the US. In the light of these new data, European universities’ contribution to domestic patenting appears not to be much less intense than that of their US counterparts.

Free movement of inventors: open-border policy and innovation in Switzerland

We study the innovation effects of the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (AFMP), signed by Switzerland and the EU in 1999. Using geocoded patent data, complemented by matched inventor-immigrant-census records, we identify a large number of cross-border inventors (CBIs), commuters from neighbouring countries working in Swiss R&D labs. We show that, during the AFMP implementation phase, the influx of CBIs increased differentially across regions at different driving distances from the border, causing a 24% increase in patents, mostly due to large and medium patent holders (as opposed to very large ones) and to inventor teams mixing CBIs and natives. We do not detect any adverse effect on native inventors and show that Swiss incumbent inventors collaborating with CBIs increased their productivity. Our evidence suggests complementarity between CBIs’ and Swiss incumbents’ knowledge assets

Free movement of inventors: open-border policy and innovation in Switzerland

We study the innovation effects of the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons, signed by Switzerland and the EU in 1999. We exploit a quasi-experimental setting created by Switzerland’s implementation policy, which initially eased off entry restrictions only for commuters from neighboring countries and induced a large inflow of “cross-border inventors” in the regions next to the border. We find that this increased patenting in such regions, relative to comparable ones farther away from the border. We do not find evidence indicating the displacement of native inventors nor a reduction in the patenting activity of Switzerland’s neighboring countries. We find that incumbent inventors in regions next to the border increased their productivity, thanks to patents in collaboration with cross-border inventors. We provide evidence suggesting that cross-border inventors contributed to Swiss patenting by enabling R&D laboratories to enlarge by hiring inventors with valuable skills, albeit without increasing the productivity of local peers outside direct collaborations

Migration and Innovation: Learning from Patent and Inventor Data

Research on international migration and innovation relies heavily on inventor and patent data, with “migrant inventors” attracting a great deal of attention, especially for what concerns their role in easing the international transfer of knowledge. This hides the fact that many of them move to their host country before starting their inventive career or even before completing their education. We discuss the conceptual and practical difficulties that stand in the way of investigating other likely channels of influence of inventor’s migration on innovation, namely the easing of skill shortages and the increase of variety in inventive teams, firms, and location.Migrants hautement qualifiés et flux internationaux de talents, connaissances et capitauxProgram Initiative d’Excellenc