Essays on patent examination and standard essential patents

This dissertation contains three studies on the patenting process and standard essential patents. The first study analyzes the matching of patent applications to examiners at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The analysis uses statistical tests originally developed to study industry agglomeration and finds strong evidence that examiners specialize in particular technologies. Specialization is more pronounced in the biotechnology and chemistry fields, and less in computers and software. Evidence of specialization becomes weaker conditioning on technology subclasses. There is no evidence that certain examiners specialize in applications that have greater importance or broader claims. Finally, the study shows that more specialized examiners have a lower grant rate and produce a larger narrowing of claim-scope during examination. The results have implications for the growing literature that exploits examiners characteristics to study the effects of patenting. In the second study, I analyze the strategic behavior of applicants for Standard Essential Patents. Owners of these patents (and especially those that rely more on patents to generate revenues) use the mechanisms provided by the patent system to delay issuance more often than owners of similar patents. The analysis also shows that applicants for Standard Essential Patents may delay issuance to obtain the right balance between patent breadth and strength, and that companies prolong prosecution until the standard is set, possibly to cover the standard with additional claims. Finally, I find a positive correlation between the issuance lag and the probability of patent litigation. This suggests that owners of Standard Essential Patents may delay issuance to obtain patents that are more valuable, or that longer lags are associated with failures in licensing negotiations. The third study exploits Standard Essential Patents as a window on standardization and analyzes the direction of technical progress that builds upon compatibility standards. It uses patent citations to characterize the dispersion of cumulative inventive activity across technological areas. The overall pattern of results suggests that Standard Setting Organizations select technologies that are important in a relatively narrow technological area, and their adoption as input for following inventive activity broadens after standardization

Shocking Technology: What Happens When Firms Make Large IT Investments?

Many economists see information technology (IT) as central to understanding trends in productivity, labor’s share of output, and employment, especially as new “artificial intelligence” (AI) technologies emerge. Yet it has been difficult to measure its effects. This paper takes a first look at the economic impacts of large custom software investment by firms—“IT shocks.” Using a novel difference-in-differences methodology, we estimate the productivity of these shocks and the associated effects on revenues and employment and we explore the implications in terms of labor’s share and other variables, including heterogeneous relationships by industry, AI use, and time. In our preferred models, IT shocks increase firm productivity by about 5%, followed by increases in revenue of 11% and in employment of 7% on average. However, employment growth following IT shocks is small or negative in mature industries; also, it has been slower in recent years, reducing job reallocation and aggregate productivity growth. Also, labor’s share of revenue decreases and operating profits rise following IT shocks

Disclosure rules and declared essential patents

Many standard setting organizations (SSOs) require participants to disclose patents that might be infringed by implementing a proposed standard, and commit to license their “essential” patents on terms that are fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND). Data from SSO intellectual property disclosures have been used in academic studies to provide a window into the standard setting process, and in legal proceedings to assess the relative contribution of different parties to a standard. We describe the disclosure process, discuss the link between SSO rules and patent-holder incentives, and analyze disclosure practices using a novel dataset constructed from the disclosure archives of thirteen major SSOs. Our empirical results suggest that subtle differences in SSO policies influence which patents are disclosed, the terms of licensing commitments, and ultimately long-run citation and litigation rates for the underlying patents. Thus, while policy debates sometimes characterize SSOs as a relatively homogeneous set of institutions, our results point in the opposite direction – towards the importance of recognizing heterogeneity in SSO policies and practices

A Knowledge, Attitude, and Perception Study on Flu and COVID-19 Vaccination during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Multicentric Italian Survey Insights

In January 2020, Chinese health authorities identified a novel coronavirus strain never before isolated in humans. It quickly spread across the world, and was eventually declared a pandemic, leading to about 310 million confirmed cases and to 5,497,113 deaths (data as of 11 January 2022). Influenza viruses affect millions of people during cold seasons, with high impacts, in terms of mortality and morbidity. Patients with comorbidities are at a higher risk of acquiring severe problems due to COVID-19 and the flu-infections that could impact their underlying clinical conditions. In the present study, knowledge, attitudes, and opinions of the general population regarding COVID-19 and influenza immunization were evaluated. A multicenter, web-based, cross-sectional study was conducted between 10 February and 12 July 2020, during the first wave of SARS-CoV-2 infections among the general population in Italy. A sample of 4116 questionnaires was collected at the end of the study period. Overall, 17.5% of respondents stated that it was unlikely that they would accept a future COVID-19 vaccine (n = 720). Reasons behind vaccine refusal/indecision were mainly a lack of trust in the vaccine (41.1%), the fear of side effects (23.4%), or a lack of perception of susceptibility to the disease (17.1%). More than 50% (53.8%; n = 2214) of the sample participants were willing to receive flu vaccinations in the forthcoming vaccination campaign, but only 28.2% of cases had received it at least once in the previous five seasons. A higher knowledge score about SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 and at least one flu vaccination during previous influenza seasons were significantly associated with the intention to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and influenza. The continuous study of factors, determining vaccination acceptance and hesitancy, is fundamental in the current context, in regard to improve vaccination confidence and adherence rates against vaccine preventable diseases

Genomic and transcriptomic characterisation of undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma of bone

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Wiely in The Journal of Pathology on 27/12/2018, available online: https://doi.org/10.1002/path.5176 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma of bone (UPSb), is a rare primary bone sarcoma that lacks a specific line of differentiation. There is very little information about the genetic alterations leading to tumourigenesis or malignant transformation. Distinguishing between UPSb and other malignant bone sarcomas, including dedifferentiated chondrosarcoma and osteosarcoma, can be challenging due to overlapping features. To explore the genomic and transcriptomic landscape of UPSb tumours, whole-exome sequencing (WES) and RNA Sequencing (RNA-Seq) were performed on UPSb tumours. All tumours lacked hotspot mutations in IDH1/2 132 or 172 codons, thereby excluding the diagnosis of dedifferentiated chondrosarcoma. Recurrent somatic mutations in TP53 were identified in 4/14 samples (29%). Moreover, recurrent mutations in histone chromatin remodelling genes, including H3F3A, ATRX and DOT1L, were identified in 5/14 samples (36%), highlighting the potential role of deregulated chromatin remodelling pathways in UPSb tumourigenesis. The majority of recurrent mutations in chromatin remodelling genes identified here are reported in COSMIC, including the H3F3A G35 and K36 hotspot residues. Copy number alteration analysis identified gains and losses in genes that have been previously altered in UPSb or UPS of soft tissue. Eight somatic gene fusions were identified by RNA-Seq, two of which, CLTC-VMP1 and FARP1-STK24, were reported previously in multiple cancers. Five gene fusions were genomically characterised. Hierarchical clustering analysis, using RNA-Seq data, distinctly clustered UPSb tumours from osteosarcoma and other sarcomas, thus molecularly distinguishing UPSb from other sarcomas. RNA-Seq expression profiling analysis and quantitative RT-PCR showed an elevated expression in FGF23 which can be a potential molecular biomarker in UPSb. To our knowledge, this study represents the first comprehensive WES and RNA-Seq analysis of UPSb tumours revealing novel protein-coding recurrent gene mutations, gene fusions and identifying a potential UPSb molecular biomarker, thereby broadening the understanding of the pathogenic mechanisms and highlighting the possibility of developing novel targeted therapeutics

Shocking Technology: What Happens When Firms Make Large IT Investments?

Many economists see information technology (IT) as central to understanding trends in productivity, labor’s share of output, and employment, especially as new “artificial intelligence” (AI) technologies emerge. Yet it has been difficult to measure its effects. This paper takes a first look at the economic impacts of large custom software investment by firms—“IT shocks.” Using a novel difference-in-differences methodology, we estimate the productivity of these shocks and the associated effects on revenues and employment and we explore the implications in terms of labor’s share and other variables, including heterogeneous relationships by industry, AI use, and time. In our preferred models, IT shocks increase firm productivity by about 5%, followed by increases in revenue of 11% and in employment of 7% on average. However, employment growth following IT shocks is small or negative in mature industries; also, it has been slower in recent years, reducing job reallocation and aggregate productivity growth. Also, labor’s share of revenue decreases and operating profits rise following IT shocks

Patenting inventions or inventing patents? Continuation practice at the USPTO

Continuations allow inventors to add new claims to old patents, leading to concerns about unintended infringement and holdup. We study how continuations are used in standard essential patent (SEP) prosecution. Difference in differences estimates suggest that continuation filings increase by 80%–121% after a standard is published. This effect is larger for applicants with licensing-based business models and for patent examiners with a higher allowance rate. Claim language is more similar for SEPs filed after standard publication, and late-filing is positively correlated with litigation. These findings suggest widespread use of continuations to draft patents that are infringed by already-published standards

Replication data for: Exploration, Competition, Institutional Ownership

The predominance of Institutional ownership among major firms raises concerns about their innovative outcomes. In this paper we show that greater institutional ownership is not only positively associated to higher levels of innovative output, but is also positively associated with the number of patents that receive a very high number of future citations, i.e. those in the top decile of the citation distribution. This gives partial support to the idea that the type of innovation pursued by firms with higher institutional ownership is of explorative type. These results hold also when a log-linear two-stage least squares regression is used to identify causal effect. Moreover, we found that the interaction of institutional ownership with competition has an inverted-U shaped effect on innovation. In this way, both the “career concern” and the “lazy manager” theories are justified and intertwine

Continuing patent applications at the USPTO

Despite their growing importance for firm innovation strategy and frequent appearance in U.S. patent policy debates, how continuing patent applications are used remains unclear. Turn-of-the-century reforms strongly limited opportunities to extend patent term and surprise competitors, but continuing applications have steadily risen since. We argue that they retain a subtle use, as applicants can file continuations to keep prosecution open and change patent scope after locking in gains with the initial patent. We document a sharp drop in parent abandonment and rise in continuations per original patent after the reforms. Continuing applications are more privately valuable than original patents, are filed in more uncertain contexts, for higher value technologies, by more strategic applicants, and react strongly to the notice of allowance. The evidence supports a current strategic use of continuing applications to craft claims over time