Sleeping patents: any reason to wake up?

Patents are typically characterized as very valuable assets for firms. Nevertheless, there are many patents in a firm's portfolio that are actually never used. In this paper, we claim that there is a relationship between a firm's decision to use or not to use a patent and the characteristics of the underlying invention. We characterize patent use according to the sleeping or non-sleeping character of the patents in the firm's portfolio. We characterize the underlying invention along different dimensions captured by the patent, i.e. importance, strategic fit, scope and innovativeness. We perform an empirical analysis on a set of patent-active firms in the chemicals industry that trade some of their patents through what is currently the only website specialized in firm technology transfer through the Internet, yet2.com. We use The NBER Patent Citations Data File to obtain information about the patents granted to these firms. Our results suggest that sleeping patents are more innovative, broader and no less important than their counterparts. We conclude that such patents are worth waking up, especially when the underlying invention is applicable to business areas far away from the patentholder's strategic core. These results suggest that there is potential for markets for technology to develop.Patents; innovativeness;

AUV/ASC cooperative survey

In this paper we describe a solution to perform autonomous surveys taking advantage of a cooperative multivehicle setup. In the proposed configuration, an ASC provides –through an USBL- absolute positioning and communications to an AUV. Thus, by following the AUV with the surface vehicle we facilitate the reception of USBL measurements in the AUV regardless of the extent of the mission. This turns into an improved navigation on the AUV’s side, with the drift bounded thanks to the absolute measurements. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is able to maintain the ASC at a close distance and improve the navigation of the AUV. Moreover, the bathymetric maps built from the AUV data are consistent enough to enable the automatic detection of present targets and program further localized missions in the area.Peer Reviewe

Active SLAM for autonomous underwater exploration

Exploration of a complex underwater environment without an a priori map is beyond the state of the art for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Despite several efforts regarding simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and view planning, there is no exploration framework, tailored to underwater vehicles, that faces exploration combining mapping, active localization, and view planning in a unified way. We propose an exploration framework, based on an active SLAM strategy, that combines three main elements: a view planner, an iterative closest point algorithm (ICP)-based pose-graph SLAM algorithm, and an action selection mechanism that makes use of the joint map and state entropy reduction. To demonstrate the benefits of the active SLAM strategy, several tests were conducted with the Girona 500 AUV, both in simulation and in the real world. The article shows how the proposed framework makes it possible to plan exploratory trajectories that keep the vehicle’s uncertainty bounded; thus, creating more consistent maps.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

An Analysis of Pure-Revenue Technology Licensing

This paper analyzes the incentives of patent holders to license their technologies for pure-revenue reasons. We hypothesize that this decision is mainly driven by characteristics of the innovation, which determine its technological attractiveness, the relevance of transaction costs in its transfer and the importance of the competition effect. By using the NBER Patent Citations Database and an original dataset of patented technologies devoted to license in an Internet marketplace, we find that importance, innovativeness, fit into the firm's core and scope of the innovation affect the patent holder's willingness to license it. Results increase our awareness on the drivers of technology licensing decisions.Publicad

Lixiviació de níquel i coure a partir de fangs galvanoplàstics que contenen Ni-Fe i Ni-Cu-Cr

Treballs Finals de Grau d'Enginyeria Química, Facultat de Química, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2017-2018, Tutors: Juan Lloren Llacuna, Benet Rins BallesterElectroplating sludges are produced by wastewater and spend baths treatment of the metal finishing and electrochemical industries. Due to their high heavy metal (Fe, Cr, Ni, Cu, Co…) content this type of sludge is considered as hazardous for the environment. For many years disposal in especial landfills has been the option to deal with sludges but not the solution to the problem. Since the sludge still contains significant amounts of valuable metals a process to recover them can be an interesting option. Recovering these metals reduces the disposal problem while providing new metal resources. Hydrometallurgy offers the chance to extract almost any metal by using aqueous chemistry. Ammonia salts can form complexes with nickel and copper while their cost and toxicity is low. That allows the leaching of these target metals with ammonia as the first stage inside an hydrometallurgical rout that also engloves solvent extraction and electrowining or crystalitzation. In this paper leaching behaviour of two different sludges with ammonium sulphate is studied. Also an alternative acidic leaching will be carried on to compare both leaching methods. The sludges studied are mainly composed of Ni-Fe (sludge 1) and Ni-Cu-Cr (sludge 2). Effect on the leaching of diferent parameters like solid to liquid ratio, initial pH or number of consecutive leachings is studied with the aim to define suitablest leaching conditions. In both sludges S/L ratio and number of consecutive leachings are the parameters that seems to affect greater leaching rates. Highest leaching rates obtained for sludge 1 and sludge 2 are 13% with 5 leachings and 36% with 4 leachings respectively. High iron and chromium seems to be the main cause of the low leaching rates obtained. In sulphurical acid leaching lower initial pH benefits leaching effectivenes while too much stirring speed seems to decrease leaching rates. For sludge 2 initial pH of 0,5 and stirring speed of 1625 are the suitablest conditions achieving an extraction of 100% in 70 minutes. Sludge 1 presents leaching problems beacose of the high pH demand of iron and his leaching rates with the same conditions arent acceptable. An An hydrometallurgical process to recover nickel and copper involving acidic leaching at a constant pH of 0,5 its proposed since this conditions achieved better leaching behaviours for both sludges. Following the leaching with the precipitation of chromium and iron using ammonia allows the rute to return to the first explained ammonia leaching route where the leached obtained it’s the complex between ammonia and Ni/Cu

The renaissance of the "renaissance man"? : specialists vs. generalists in teams of inventors

Is there a role for the multifaceted Renaissance Man in modern team-intensive innovation activities? This paper argues that researchers with broad knowledge, also known as generalists, make an especially valuable contribution to innovation teams. Given the re-combinative nature of technological progress, innovation results depend crucially on the skilful matching of different pieces of knowledge. The presence of generalists in innovation teams makes the knowledge recombination process more effective, even if this comes at the cost of reduced knowledge depth. Moreover, typical barriers in team processes become less acute with the presence of generalists. We analyze the role of generalists versus specialists in innovation teams by tracking the trajectories of inventors in the electrical and electronics industry through their patenting activity. Our findings suggest that innovation teams with the contribution of generalists outperform those that rely on a diverse set of specialistsFinancial support under Grants ECO2009-08278 and ECO2009-08308 of the Spanish Government is gratefully acknowledge

The strategic allocation of inventors to R&D collaborations

Safeguarding against unintended leakage of valuable knowledge in R&D collaboration requires careful attention to the role of inventors participating in these collaborations. In this paper, we claim that the degree of protection of the knowledge embodied by inventors affects how an opportunistic partner can use this information when technology leakage occurs. The implication is that those inventors whose set of knowledge is more protected are more likely to be assigned to joint activities than their co-workers. By relying on patent ownership and authorship data, we analyze the allocation of inventors to collaborative projects from a sample of large pharmaceutical firms. Our results confirm that inventors are strategically allocated to projects according to their degree of preemptive power.Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competition through project no ECO2012-33427 is gratefully acknowledge