Measuring patent assessment quality-Analyzing the degree and kind of (in)consistency in patent offices' decision making

We argue that consistent decision making in judging a patent's validity and basing this on its underlying technological quality are important elements of patent office service ("assessment") quality. To understand which level of assessment quality patent offices (can) provide, particularly in new technological areas, we study the concordance of the European Patent Office's (EPO) granting and opposition decisions for individual patents. Using the biotechnology industry in the 1980s (an emerging patenting area then) as an example, we find no empirical evidence that the EPO provided maximal or optimal assessment quality as far as can be told from bibliographic indicators. We discuss research limitations and consequences of this first empirical analysis, and suggest ideas for refinements in future work. © 2007

Correction to: Bitcoin and the rise of decentralized autonomous organizations

Following the publication of this article [1], it was noted that the author list was incomplete and was missing the following three authors

Patent Pools: Intellectual Property Rights and Competition

Patent pools do not correct all problems associated with patent thickets. In this respect, patent pools might not stop the outsider problem from striking pools. Moreover, patent pools can be expensive to negotiate, can exclude patent holders with smaller numbers of patents or enable a group of major players to form a cartel that excludes new competitors. For all the above reasons, patent pools are subject to regulatory clearance because they could result in a monopoly. The aim of this article is to present the relationship between patents and competition in a broad context

A study of patent thickets

Report analysing whether entry of UK enterprises into patenting in a technology area is affected by patent thickets in the technology area

International patent families: from application strategies to statistical indicators

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the characteristics of international patent families, including their domestic component. We exploit a relatively under-studied feature of patent families, namely the number of patents covering the same invention within a given jurisdiction. Using this information, we highlight common patterns in the structure of international patent families, which reflect both the patenting strategies of innovators and the peculiarities of the different patent systems. While the literature has extensively used family size, i.e. the number of countries in which a given invention is protected, as a measure of patent value, our results suggest that the number of patent filings in the priority country within a patent family as well as the timespan between the first and last fillings within a family are other insightful indicators of the value of patented innovations

On the Effects of Authority on Peer Motivation:Learning from Wikipedia

__Research Summary:__ We investigate the conditions under which authority can be deployed without reducing subordinate motivation. We show that lateral authority, the legitimacy to resolve task-specific problems, is welcomed by members of an organization in the resolution of coordination conflicts, the more so (a) the fiercer the conflict to be resolved, (b) the higher the competence-based status of the authority, (c) the lower the tenure of, and (d) the more focused the organizational members are. Analyzing the discussion behavior of members of Wikipedia between 2002 and 2014, we corroborate our allegations empirically by analyzing 642,916 article–discussion pages. Our findings, obtained for a modern collective production community, provide learning opportunities for how traditional organizations may want to govern activities of their idiosyncratically motivated staff. __Managerial Summary:__ When managers use their (legitimate) power to take decisions on behalf of their staff, they risk setting back employees and making them detach from the firm. This danger is particularly salient whenever highly motivated teams of staff autonomously work on corporate problems and are used to governing themselves. Examples range from skunkwork initiatives within traditional firms to entire team-based organizations, such as Valve or Zappos. When and how managers can add value by resolving conflicts within and across these teams once their self-organization fails is what we study in this article. Inspired by data from Wikipedia, we suggest that managers should not intervene prematurely, benefit from visible competence, and are respected most for their actions by specialized peers who recently joined the organization

On the Effects of Authority on Peer Motivation: Learning from Wikipedia

We investigate the conditions under which authority can be deployed without reducing subordinate motivation. We show that lateral authority, the legitimacy to resolve task?specific problems, is welcomed by members of an organization in the resolution of coordination conflicts, the more so (a) the fiercer the conflict to be resolved, (b) the higher the competence?based status of the authority, (c) the lower the tenure of, and (d) the more focused the organizational members are. Analyzing the discussion behavior of members of Wikipedia between 2002 and 2014, we corroborate our allegations empirically by analyzing 642,916 article–discussion pages. Our findings, obtained for a modern collective production community, provide learning opportunities for how traditional organizations may want to govern activities of their idiosyncratically motivated staff

Determinants of Opposition against EPO Patent Grants – The Case of Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals

We analyze the determinants of opposition to biotechnology and pharmaceutical patents granted by the European Patent Office (EPO) between 1978 and 1996. Opposition at the EPO is the most important mechanism by which the validity of a European patent can be challenged. In our sample, 8.6% of the patents are attacked in opposition proceedings. We show empirically that the likelihood of opposition increases with patent value, and that opposition is particularly frequent in areas with strong patenting activity and with high technical or market uncertainty. We comment on the implications of these results for the design of the patent and litigation system