Formal vs. informal protection instruments and the strategic use of patents in an Expected-Utility framework

The present article examines the question whether or not different types of firms tend to protect their innovations with varying mechanisms. Against the background of the Expected-Utility Theory (EU-Theory), firms are differentiated by their size, technological field and their degree of internationalization. According to the EU-Theory modelling, it is hypothesized that large, high-tech and strongly internationalized firms show a stronger tendency to use formal instruments, e.g. patents, to protect their innovations, whereas small and medium-sized (SME), low-tech and weakly internationalized companies fol-low the strategy of protecting their innovations with informal instruments, e.g. secrecy, to maximize their expected utility. A twofold approach is followed to analyze the theoretical model. For the empirical testing a large-scale survey about 540 records of patenting companies in Germany is used. Differences in attitudes towards protection mechanisms and differences in the actual IPR-management behavior between firms are analyzed. The results show that the attitudes towards protecting innovative achievements only differ slightly by firm type. Large differences can be revealed on the behavioral level which, together with other findings, leads to the conclusion that mostly SMEs are forced to use certain protection mechanisms to keep pace with large companies and technological precursors in fast growing markets

Academic knowledge as a driver for technological innovation? Comparing universities, small and large firms in knowledge production and dissemination

It is generally claimed that universities provide the scientific basis for future technological progress. Still, empirical evidence of the impact of direct links between universities and firms remains weak and is often at least inconsistent. This paper aims at contributing to the literature by analyzing how direct academic involvement affects the output of inventive activities of research teams in different organizational backgrounds. By applying a unique dataset of German academic and corporate patents, we find that boundary-spanning knowledge production with academic inventors raises the innovative performance of SMEs and MNEs. Furthermore, geographical proximity between team members is generally shown to be valuable for team performance in terms of the influence on future technological developments. At the same time, the results indicate that academic involvement helps inventor teams to profit from spatially distant knowledge sources

Patents as indicators for knowledge generation and diffusion in mechanical engineering and green biotechnology: A first assessment

This study includes two expert reports, which are based on each other. At the core of the first expertise is the analysis of the patent application structures within the technological field of mechanical engineering and their evolution over time at an international level. Secondly, building on the first expertise, a field comparison of mechanical engineering and green biotechnology is performed with the help of a patent analysis

Academic patents in Germany

Within this study, we compare the patenting activities by universities and public research institutes in Germany. The crucial problem hereby is that a large share of patent filings from universities is registered by companies and the university staff only appears as an inventor. Therefore, improved approaches, which are also able to detect patent filings that have not been formally submitted by universities themselves, are needed in order to correctly identify the amount of university patents. Within the course of this analysis, we take both viewpoints, i.e. the "applicants' perspective" and the extended perspective of "academic patents", which takes university inventors into account

“Formal and informal networkedness among German Academics”: exploring the role of conferences and co-publications in scientific performance

This paper builds on the established finding that the performance of scholars depends on their interpersonal networks. Until now, these networks have largely been measured by analysing the credits and acknowledgements on their publications, especially their co-authorships. First, it seeks to clarify inconsistencies in existing findings by providing a comprehensive analysis of the effects of co-authorship among the overall population of actively publishing researchers from Germany. Second, it acknowledges that co-publication is only one very formal and explicit form of academic networking and develops a new indicator based on an academic’s inferred co-presence at conferences. Comparing the impact of these two different aspects of networkedness, we find that hierarchy and influence play a stronger role in determining a scientist’s performance in the context of informal networks than they do when considering formal co-publication networks

Patents and the financial performance of firms - An analysis based on stock market data

The following article systematically analyzes the question of how the results of R&D and its protection - or so to say, the technology base of a firm - can influence its market value and profits. Based on theoretical arguments it is hypothesized that large and highly valuable patent portfolios of firms have significant effects on their competitiveness in the long run. For the empirical testing a panel dataset including 479 firms from 1990 to 2007 based on the DTI-Scoreboard is used, which contains data on R&D expenditures, market capitalization, turnover etc. and structural information like firm-size and industry sector. To this database the relevant information on patenting behavior and financial performance are added, so effects of firm characteristics can be calculated. To assess the value of a firm's patent portfolio, different value measures like the number of received patent citations, opposed patents, number of inventors etc. are being applied. The results suggest that at least at the firm level, especially forward citations and family size positively influence market value. Concerning the Return on Investment, especially oppositions and family size show positive effects. This leads to the conclusion that securing international markets has a positive effect on the value of the firm in the home market. --

SME patenting: An empirical analysis in nine countries

Empirical evidence shows that the distribution of patent applications is highly skewed in terms of company size, with a few large enterprises being responsible for the majority of patent applications. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), on the other hand, are important players in national innovation systems and are the subject of policy sup-port in many countries. Thus, this study examines the participation rate of SMEs in patenting activities in more detail, differentiating SME patent filings by country and technology area. The analyses are based on a unique, integrated and enriched patent data set of nearly 1.2 million patent applications, built upon PATSTAT data, separating companies into SMEs and large enterprises. The results of descriptive and multivariate analyses reveal that SMEs file fewer interna-tional patents than multinational enterprises (MNEs). However, those SMEs which are active internationally even outperform their larger counterparts in terms of international-ization. It can further be observed that SMEs are more active in emerging technologies, have smaller inventor teams and smaller family sizes on average. Furthermore, patents filed by SMEs are withdrawn more frequently but refused less often. Patents of large firms, on the other hand, have a higher chance of being granted and are cited more frequently