Patenting and industrial performance: the case of the machine tool industry

Using the case of an important capital goods industry the paper examines the impact of the national patent system on the performance of firms. Many theories attempt to explain the firms’ innovative behavior using the concepts of national and sectorial systems of innovation. The patent law plays a particularly important role in these systems. At the level of the firm its importance rests on the possibility to appropriate profits. An empirical analysis of a sample of the 49 largest international manufacturers of machine tools shows that patents are a superior mechanism for appropriating the returns on R&D in this industry. This is indicated by a strong positive relationship between the market value of the firm and its patenting activities. -- Am Beispiel einer wichtigen Investitionsgüterindustrie wird in diesem Beitrag der Einfluß nationaler Patentsysteme auf den Unternehmenserfolg untersucht. Zahlreiche Theorien gehen davon aus, daß das Innovationsverhalten von Unternehmen von nationalen und sektoralen Innovationssystemen beeinflußt wird. Das Patentrecht spielt in diesen Systemen eine wichtige Rolle. Auf der Unternehmensebene beeinflußt es die Möglichkeiten der Unternehmen Gewinne zu erzielen. Am Beispiel der 49 größten Unternehmen der internationalen Werkzeugmaschinenindustrie wird nachgewiesen, daß in diesem Industriezweig Patente ein wichtiges Instrument zur Erzielung von Gewinnen darstellen. Dies zeigt sich besonders deutlich an der engen positiven Beziehung, die zwischen dem Marktwert der Unternehmen und ihrem Patentierverhalten empirisch festgestellt wurde.

Efficient Algorithms for Morphisms over Omega-Regular Languages

Morphisms to finite semigroups can be used for recognizing omega-regular languages. The so-called strongly recognizing morphisms can be seen as a deterministic computation model which provides minimal objects (known as the syntactic morphism) and a trivial complementation procedure. We give a quadratic-time algorithm for computing the syntactic morphism from any given strongly recognizing morphism, thereby showing that minimization is easy as well. In addition, we give algorithms for efficiently solving various decision problems for weakly recognizing morphisms. Weakly recognizing morphism are often smaller than their strongly recognizing counterparts. Finally, we describe the language operations needed for converting formulas in monadic second-order logic (MSO) into strongly recognizing morphisms, and we give some experimental results.Comment: Full version of a paper accepted to FSTTCS 201

Patenting and industrial performance: the case of the machine tool industry

"Am Beispiel einer wichtigen Investitionsgüterindustrie wird in diesem Beitrag der Einfluß nationaler Patentsysteme auf den Unternehmenserfolg untersucht. Zahlreiche Theorien gehen davon aus, daß das Innovationsverhalten von Unternehmen von nationalen und sektoralen Innovationssystemen beeinflußt wird. Das Patentrecht spielt in diesen Systemen eine wichtige Rolle. Auf der Unternehmensebene beeinflußt es die Möglichkeiten der Unternehmen Gewinne zu erzielen. Am Beispiel der 49 größten Unternehmen der internationalen Werkzeugmaschinenindustrie wird nachgewiesen, daß in diesem Industriezweig Patente ein wichtiges Instrument zur Erzielung von Gewinnen darstellen. Dies zeigt sich besonders deutlich an der engen positiven Beziehung, die zwischen dem Marktwert der Unternehmen und ihrem Patentierverhalten empirisch festgestellt wurde." (Autorenreferat)"Using the case of an important capital goods industry the paper examines the impact of the national patent system on the performance of firms. Many theories attempt to explain the firms' innovative behavior using the concepts of national and sectorial systems of innovation. The patent law plays a particularly important role in these systems. At the level of the firm its importance rests on the possibility to appropriate profits. An empirical analysis of a sample of the 49 largest international manufacturers of machine tools shows that patents are a superior mechanism for appropriating the returns on R&D in this industry. This is indicated by a strong positive relationship between the market value of the firm and its patenting activities." (author's abstract

Testing costs and testing capacity according to the REACH requirements:results of a survey of independent and corporate GLP laboratories in the EU and Switzerland

This study focuses on the prices for laboratory testing services and testing capacity in nine of the major European chemicals producing countries. The purpose is to bridge the existing gap of a representative study on test prices and the available testing capacity. At the core are seventy-six test categories, in particular toxicological and ecotoxicological tests as required by REACH, the EU Chemicals Policy Review. The price and capacity information was gathered by a survey of twenty-eight independent and corporate laboratories in the second half of 2004. The survey aimed at finding out minimum, average and maximum estimates of costs/prices and the available average and maximum testing capacities. The data exploration has shown a considerable variability in the prices for single tests. For reasons of completeness an overview of the testing cost for a registration according to the four work packages of REACH is provided. The most difficult issue was the estimation of average and maximum testing capacities. Surprisingly the large laboratories supply with 96.5% the vast amount of the total capacity available for testing chemicals in the nine European countries the survey has covered. A complete set of tables and figures representing detailed price and capacity information is available upon e-mail request to the author

Regulierungswettbewerb und Innovation in der chemischen Industrie

Europa, Japan und die USA verwirklichen den Schutz von Mensch und Umwelt vor möglichen schädlichen Wirkungen von Chemikalien mit sehr unterschiedlichen Regulierungsstrategien. Da die Regulierungssysteme auch Produktivität und Innovationsbereitschaft der Unternehmen beeinflussen, wird in diesem Beitrag untersucht, ob nationale Gesetzgeber mit dem Chemikalienrecht in einem Regulierungswettbewerb um mobile Produktionsfaktoren wie Kapital konkurrieren. Es wird überprüft, ob der Prozeß der Globalisierung zu einer kreativen Suche nach effizienterem und effektiverem Chemikalienrecht führt und damit langfristig einen harmonisierungsähnlichen Effekt dieses Rechts bewirkt oder ob die Gegenthese gilt, daß der Wettbewerb der Staaten im Globalisierungsprozeß ein „race to the bottom beinhaltet, d.h. eine Abwärtsentwicklung zu niedrigeren Sicherheitsstandards bewirkt. Dabei werden Aussagen zur Struktur und zu den Wirkungen der Neustoff-Regulierung des Chemikalienrechts theoretisch abgeleitet und empirisch überprüft. Die empirische Analyse stützte sich auf einen Vergleich der Rechtsvorschriften und eine eigens für die Analyse aufgebaute Datenbank mit Daten aus den Geschäftsberichten europäischer, japanischer und amerikanischer Chemieunternehmen. -- Europe, Japan, and the US apply very different regulatory strategies in order to further the protection of human beings and the environment with respect to the impact of chemicals. Since various regulatory systems also have differing impacts on corporate productivity and innovation, this paper investigates whether national legislation covering chemicals control law is used in competing for mobile factors of production (for example, capital). The process of globalization is tested to explore whether it leads to a creative search for more efficient and effective chemicals control law, and thus will lead in the long run to a harmonization of the law, or whether the counter hypothesis is correct that regulatory competition among states will lead to a “race to the lowest acceptable minimum,” and a deterioration towards lower safety standards. The study includes an empirical analysis of the structure and impact of the law on the notification of new chemical substances. The empirical analysis is based on a comparison of the different laws of the EU, Japan, and the US, and utilizes a special database developed from the annual reports of European, Japanese, and US companies.

The Intersection Problem for Finite Monoids

We investigate the intersection problem for finite monoids, which asks for a given set of regular languages, represented by recognizing morphisms to finite monoids from a variety V, whether there exists a word contained in their intersection. Our main result is that the problem is PSPACE-complete if V is contained in DS and NP-complete if V is non-trivial and contained in DO. Our NP-algorithm for the case that V is contained in DO uses novel methods, based on compression techniques and combinatorial properties of DO. We also show that the problem is log-space reducible to the intersection problem for deterministic finite automata (DFA) and that a variant of the problem is log-space reducible to the membership problem for transformation monoids. In light of these reductions, our hardness results can be seen as a generalization of both a classical result by Kozen and a theorem by Beaudry, McKenzie and Therien.Comment: Extended version of a paper accepted to STACS 201

Testing Simon's congruence

Piecewise testable languages are a subclass of the regular languages. There are many equivalent ways of defining them; Simon's congruence $\sim_k$ is one of the most classical approaches. Two words are $\sim_k$-equivalent if they have the same set of (scattered) subwords of length at most k. A language L is piecewise testable if there exists some k such that L is a union of $\sim_k$-classes. For each equivalence class of $\sim_k$, one can define a canonical representative in shortlex normal form, that is, the minimal word with respect to the lexicographic order among the shortest words in $\sim_k$. We present an algorithm for computing the canonical representative of the $\sim_k$-class of a given word $w \in A^*$ of length n. The running time of our algorithm is in O(|A|n) even if $k \le n$ is part of the input. This is surprising since the number of possible subwords grows exponentially in k. The case $k > n$ is not interesting since then, the equivalence class of w is a singleton. If the alphabet is fixed, the running time of our algorithm is linear in the size of the input word. Moreover, for fixed alphabet, we show that the computation of shortlex normal forms for $\sim_k$ is possible in deterministic logarithmic space. One of the consequences of our algorithm is that one can check with the same complexity whether two words are $\sim_k$-equivalent (with k being part of the input)

Organising product stewardship in large chemical companies

The paper analyses the organisation of Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) management in the chemicals manufacturing industry, focussing in particular on the implementation of the “Responsible Care” framework and the concept of “Product Stewardship”. We conduct in depth interviews with two major manufacturers of speciality chemicals regarding their overall strategy with respect to product safety, the organisational structure of their EHS management, the decision processes involved in product development and their Product Stewardship management systems. The efficiency of centralised versus decentralised organisational structures for achieving product safety are discussed and suggestions are given how the incentives of companies to efficiently implement and follow Product Stewardship guidelines can be enhanced

Testing Simon’s congruence

Piecewise testable languages are a subclass of the regular languages. There are many equivalent ways of defining them; Simon’s congruence ∼kis one of the most classical approaches. Two words are ∼k-equivalent if they have the same set of (scattered) subwords of length at most k. A language L is piecewise testable if there exists some k such that L is a union of ∼k-classes. For each equivalence class of ∼k, one can define a canonical representative in shortlex normal form, that is, the minimal word with respect to the lexicographic order among the shortest words in ∼k. We present an algorithm for computing the canonical representative of the ∼k-class of a given word w ∈ A∗of length n. The running time of our algorithm is in O(|A|n) even if k ≤ n is part of the input. This is surprising since the number of possible subwords grows exponentially in k. The case k > n is not interesting since then, the equivalence class of w is a singleton. If the alphabet is fixed, the running time of our algorithm is linear in the size of the input word. Moreover, for fixed alphabet, we show that the computation of shortlex normal forms for ∼kis possible in deterministic logarithmic space. One of the consequences of our algorithm is that one can check with the same complexity whether two words are ∼k-equivalent (with k being part of the input)

Green’s relations in deterministic finite automata

Green’s relations are a fundamental tool in the structure theory of semigroups. They can be defined by reachability in the (right/left/twosided) Cayley graph. The equivalence classes of Green’s relations then correspond to the strongly connected components. We study the complexity of Green’s relations in semigroups generated by transformations on a finite set. We show that, in the worst case, the number of equivalence classes is in the same order of magnitude as the number of elements. Another important parameter is the maximal length of a chain of strongly connected components. Our main contribution is an exponential lower bound for this parameter. There is a simple construction for an arbitrary set of generators. However, the proof for a constant size alphabet is rather involved. We also investigate the special cases of unary and binary alphabets. All these results are extended to deterministic finite automata and their syntactic semigroups