Patent Classifications as Indicators of Intellectual Organization

Using the 138,751 patents filed in 2006 under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, co-classification analysis is pursued on the basis of three- and four-digit codes in the International Patent Classification (IPC, 8th edition). The co-classifications among the patents enable us to analyze and visualize the relations among technologies at different levels of aggregation. The hypothesis that classifications might be considered as the organizers of patents into classes, and that therefore co-classification patterns--more than co-citation patterns--might be useful for mapping, is not corroborated. The classifications hang weakly together, even at the four-digit level at the country level, more specificity can be made visible. However, countries are not the appropriate units of analysis because patent portfolios are largely similar in many advanced countries in terms of the classes attributed. Instead of classes, one may wish to explore the mapping of title words as a better approach to visualize the intellectual organization of patents

Catching Up to the Technology Frontier: The Dichotomy between Innovation and Imitation

Using data for 55 developing and developed countries, this research examines the roles of technology transfer, research intensity, educational attainment and the ability to absorb foreign technology in explaining cross-country differences in productivity growth. The results show that innovation is an important factor for growth in OECD countries whereas growth in developing countries is driven by imitation. Furthermore the interaction between educational attainment and the distance to the frontier is a significant determinant of growth in the overall sample

Going means trouble and staying makes it double: the value of licensing recorded music online

This paper discusses whether a copyright compensation system (CCS) for recorded music—endowing private Internet subscribers with the right to download and use works in return for a fee—would be welfare increasing. It reports on the results of a discrete choice experiment conducted with a representative sample of the Dutch population consisting of 4986 participants. Under some conservative assumptions, we find that applied only to recorded music, a mandatory CCS could increase the welfare of rights holders and users in the Netherlands by over €600 million per year (over €35 per capita). This far exceeds current rights holder revenues from the market of recorded music of ca. €144 million per year. A monthly CCS fee of ca. €1.74 as a surcharge on Dutch Internet subscriptions would raise the same amount of revenues to rights holders as the current market for recorded music. With a voluntary CCS, the estimated welfare gains to users and rights holders are even greater for CCS fees below €20 on the user side. A voluntary CCS would also perform better in the long run, as it could retain a greater extent of market coordination. The results of our choice experiment indicate that a well-designed CCS for recorded music would simultaneously make users and rights holders better off. This result holds even if we correct for frequently observed rates of overestimation in contingent valuation studies

Access Versus Incentives: Analysing Intellectual Property Policies in Four UN Specialized Agencies by Emphasizing the Role of the World Intellectual Property Organization and Human Rights

Concerns have been expressed over the role of WIPO in influencing the intellectual property policies of other specialized agencies of the United Nations. This article reviews the policies of FAO, WHO and UNESCO, in addition to WIPO itself, and finds very interesting patterns of cooperation. While intellectual property law is primarily concerned with providing incentives for the production of new, creative and applicable arts and knowledge, human rights law is primarily concerned with providing improved access to goods crucial for human well-being and survival. WIPO itself has expressed in some of its documents concerns of the issue of access, and has shown some understanding of human rights concerns in this regard. While UNESCO has paid less attention to intellectual property rights over the last decades, rather emphasizing cultural preservation, both FAO and WHO has increased their focus on intellectual property rights. The two latter increase their cooperation with WIPO, but without a formal agreement with WIPO. The article finds that WIPO, as a specialized agency, has to cooperate with specialized agencies, and there is no reason to believe that the cooperation will be in the form of a ‘one-way’ process in which WIPO instructs the other agencies. At the same time, if the emphasis on incentives in effect undermines the real access to the crucial goods, a new balance has to be found

Copyright [Comic]

La historieta ilustra, sobre la base de la Propiedad intelectual, el concepto de Derechos de autor. Mediante tiras cómicas se narran las aventuras de cuatro adolescentes que van aprendiendo en el camino este concepto, y el provecho que pueden sacar ellos y la sociedad en general