Are More Important Patents Approved More Slowly and Should They Be?

Innovative activities often are heavily regulated. Reviews conducted by administrative agencies take time and are not perfectly accurate. Of particular concern is whether, by design or not, such agencies discriminate against more important innovations by taking more time to perform their reviews. We study the relationship between the length of patent review and the importance of inventions in a theoretical model. We find that, controlling for the importance of innovations, the welfare-maximising patent approval delay decreases over time. Second, controlling for a patent's position in the new technology cycle, the optimal examination time decreases with the importance of patents. We test our predictions on US GM crop patent data from 1988 to 1998. The evidence supports the predictions of the theoretical model.

Administrative Delays as Barriers to Trade

One domestic firm and one foreign firm must decide when to introduce their new product to the home market. The home government may apply an import tariff, an administrative delay, or both to the product of the foreign firm. We show that, while both the tariff and administrative delay can ensure the socially optimal timing of entry, the administrative delay is the less efficient instrument for maximising home welfare. If trade liberalization constrains the import tariff to be below its domestically optimal level, we show that the optimal administrative delay leads to lower levels of world welfare than the optimal tariff, so that trade liberalization can be welfare decreasing.

How Basic is (Patented) University Research? The Case of GM Crops

One of the main reasons for subsidising university research is the widespread belief that it generates proportionally more positive knowledge externalities than corporate research. Over the last two decades, however, this belief has been shaken by the increasingly aggressive patenting of university-based innovation. This perception was supported by Henderson, Jaffe and Trajtenberg (1998) who found both a sharp increase in university patenting and a decrease in the relative 'importance' of university innovation over the later part of their 1965-1992 sample. In this paper, we have compared the knowledge externalities generated by university and corporate patents related to GM crop research. Our main measure of knowledge externalities is the total number of third party cites generated by a patent. Our main result is that patented university research is not associated with greater knowledge externalities than corresponding corporate patents. If anything, corporate patents appear to generate greater numbers of net citations. This basic conclusion survives when we control for a number of variables that could affect citation counts (e.g. patent examiner effects) and when we break our sample into sub-periods. This does not imply that university patents are similar to corporate patents in every respect. We find two main differences. Firstly, there is some evidence that the shape of the distribution of citations is not identical for the two groups of patents as university patents appear to experience a more sluggish start than their corporate brethren. Secondly, even controlling quite narrowly for areas of specialisation, university patents receive a disproportionate number of cites from other university patents. These two results suggest that there are some fundamental differences in the types of knowledge flows generated by university and corporate patents.

Competition, Regulation, and Intellectual Property Management in Genetically Modified Foods: Evidence from Survey Data

We present survey results regarding a series of hypotheses on industry structure, regulation and patent policy towards GM food crops, focussing on the stages of the industry that generate innovations and approved products for sale to the farming sector. Licensing as a means of delegating litigation and regulatory costs comes out as one of the most consistent themes in our responses. We link this practice to a two-tiered industry structure, a weak relation between litigation threat and research trajectory, and a perception by our respondents that patents - as well as patent design - are 'one step removed' from their research decisions

Are More Important Patents Approved More Slowly and Should They Be?

Innovative activities often are heavily regulated. Reviews conducted by administrative agencies take time and are not perfectly accurate. Of particular concern is whether, by design or not, such agencies discriminate against more important innovations by taking more time to perform their reviews. We study the relationship between the length of patent review and the importance of inventions in a theoretical model. We find that, controlling for the importance of innovations, the welfare-maximising patent approval delay decreases over time. Second, controlling for a patent's position in the new technology cycle, the optimal examination time decreases with the importance of patents. We test our predictions on US GM crop patent data from 1988 to 1998. The evidence supports the predictions of the theoretical model

The Relationship Between Intellectual Property Law and Competition Law: An Economic Approach

This paper presents an economic analysis of the relationship between Intellectual Property (IP) Law and Competition Law. Contrary to some of the recent debate, our analysis emphasises the separation of IP Law and Competition Law: IP law should concern itself with assigning and defending intellectual property rights, while Competition Law should concern itself with the use of those rights. This separation extends to the enforcement of the law as well, where we argue that once property rights have been assigned, no further distinction based on intellectual or non-intellectual property should be made. While the IP/Competition Law interface has some specificity due to the types of behaviours that tend to arise more frequently where IP is concerned, we argue for a set of principles for Competition Policy that include restraint, a commitment not to revisit ex post the rights granted by IP law, and a commitment to make large changes in property right regimes only when very large changes in ex post regulation occur

A Tale of Two Metrics: Research Assessment vs Recognised Excellence

We build an economics department entirely composed of Nobel Prize winners and evaluate it using standard research assessment metrics. Performing the same evaluation on existing departments, we find that the rating of our Nobel Prize department does not stand out from other departments. Compared to recent research evaluations, our Nobel Prize department's ranking is less stable. This suggests a significant effect of score "targeting" induced by the ranking exercise. We find some evidence that modifying the assessment criteria to increase the totatl number of publications considered can help distinguish the top

Model-predictive control for non-domestic buildings: a critical review and prospects

Model-predictive control (MPC) has recently excited a great deal of interest as a new control paradigm for non-domestic buildings. Since it is based on the notion of optimisation, MPC is, in principle, well-placed to deliver significant energy savings and reduction in carbon emissions compared to existing rule-based control systems. In this paper, we critically review the prospects for buildings MPC and, in particular, the central role of the predictive mathematical model that lies at its heart; our clear emphasis is on practical implementation rather than control-theoretic aspects, and covers the role of occupants as well as the form of the predictive model. The most appropriate structure for such a model is still an open question, which we discuss alongside the development of the initial model, and the process of updating the model during the building’s operational life. The importance of sensor placement is highlighted alongside the possibility of updating the model with occupants’ comfort perception. We conclude that there is an urgent need for research on the automated creation and updating of predictive models if MPC is to become an economically-viable control methodology for non-domestic buildings. Finally, more evidence through operating full scale buildings with MPC is required to demonstrate the viability of this method

Grantbacks, Territorial Restraints and the Type of Follow-On Innovation: The "But for..." Defence

We analyse the effect of grantback clauses in licensing contracts. While competition authorities fear that grantback clauses might decrease the licensee?s ex post incentives to innovate, a standard defence is that grantback clauses are required for the patent-owner to agree to license its technology in the first place. We examine the validity of this ?but for? defence and the equilibrium effect of grantback clauses on the innovation incentives of the licensee for both non-severable and severable innovations. Under the 2004 EU Technology Transfer Guidelines , and the guidelines for some other jurisdictions, grantback clauses that apply to ?non - severable? (read ?infringing?) innovations are considered to be less controversial than clauses that apply to ?severable? innovations. We show, to the contrary, that grantback clauses do not increase the patent- holder?s incentives to license when non-severable innovations are at stake but they do when severable innovations are concerned ? suggesting that the ?but for? defence might be valid for severable innovations but not for non-severable ones. Moreover we show that, for severable innovations, grantback clauses can increase the range of parameters for which follow-on innovation by the licensee occurs

How Basic is (Patented) University Research? The Case of GM Crops

One of the main reasons for subsidising university research is the widespread belief that it generates proportionally more positive knowledge externalities than corporate research. Over the last two decades, however, this belief has been shaken by the increasingly aggressive patenting of university-based innovation. This perception was supported by Henderson, Jaffe and Trajtenberg (1998) who found both a sharp increase in university patenting and a decrease in the relative 'importance' of university innovation over the later part of their 1965-1992 sample. In this paper, we have compared the knowledge externalities generated by university and corporate patents related to GM crop research. Our main measure of knowledge externalities is the total number of third party cites generated by a patent. Our main result is that patented university research is not associated with greater knowledge externalities than corresponding corporate patents. If anything, corporate patents appear to generate greater numbers of net citations. This basic conclusion survives when we control for a number of variables that could affect citation counts (e.g. patent examiner effects) and when we break our sample into sub-periods. This does not imply that university patents are similar to corporate patents in every respect. We find two main differences. Firstly, there is some evidence that the shape of the distribution of citations is not identical for the two groups of patents as university patents appear to experience a more sluggish start than their corporate brethren. Secondly, even controlling quite narrowly for areas of specialisation, university patents receive a disproportionate number of cites from other university patents. These two results suggest that there are some fundamental differences in the types of knowledge flows generated by university and corporate patents