Corporate Patents Research Articles

Analyzing a firm’s international portfolio of technological knowledge: A declarative ontology-based OWL approach for patent documents

Patent databases contain large amounts of information about the inventions and metadata of corporate patents (such as the technological domain they belong to, their applicants, and inventors). These databases are available online but since they do not provide explicit information about the relationships between different patent metadata, it is not possible for computers to automatically process such relationships. Several patent ontologies have been proposed so far in order to provide patent knowledge bases with semantics by merging information from different databases and establishing a common vocabulary. However, previous ontology literature has paid limited attention to the representation of specific relationships among metadata and the design of reasoning procedures that would allow some information not explicitly specified in the databases or ontologies to be inferred. This article proposes a methodological approach for the definition of relationships and reasoning tasks for patent analysis by using patent ontologies, and provides a real illustration of its potential in the context of international flows of research knowledge. This declarative method is based on the formal definition of key patent analysis indicators (KPAIs). The case study analysis is relevant because global competition and the importance of multinational firms in the patent process have resulted in firms not only patenting on their domestic markets but also transferring their patents to other markets and developing patents in different countries. In this context, it is important to analyze the connections between the patenting processes and the international knowledge flows of research and development. More specifically, the paper illustrates the applicability of the proposed methodology by classifying patents into the five patterns of internationalization identified by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The role of proximity to universities for corporate patenting: provincial evidence from China

This paper investigates whether proximity to universities matters for corporate patenting in Chinese provinces. The investigation is based on estimating regional knowledge production functions using a Chinese provincial data set for the years from 2000 to 2008. Geographic proximity of companies to universities is taken as a key element to measure firms’ accessibility to university research. In addition, quality-adjusted accessibility measures are considered in extended models to take into account quality difference in university research. The results suggest the existence of spatial academic effects on corporate patenting activities in China as found in the previous literature for Western economies. In China, however, these effects are especially strong for realising technologically less demanding non-invention corporate patents than for invention corporate patents. Moreover, companies’ geographic proximity to universities dominates over university research quality difference for determining the relevance of universities as knowledge sources for companies. Extended models are estimated for robustness checks which ascertain the main results.

Inventor collaboration over distance: a comparison of academic and corporate patents

Patenting is often done in collaboration with other inventors to integrate complementary and additional knowledge. The paper takes a spatial view of this issue and analyses the distances between inventors of German patents. We compare the distances between invention teams of German patent applications from 1993–2006 and distinguish between academic and corporate teams and those consisting of researchers from both domains (‘mixed teams’). Due to their different institutional backgrounds different types of proximity guide their spatial search for partners. The basic finding is that regional collaboration clearly prevails. However, the distance between collaborating inventors of corporate patents exceeds that of inventors of academic patents, but the largest distances can be found in science–industry collaborative patents. When excluding directly neighboured collaboration, which is likely to be in-house collaboration, the differences between academic and corporate teams vanish, but mixed teams still overcome longer distances.

Corporate taxation and the choice of patent location within multinational firms

Corporate patents are important assets in the modern economy, where knowledge is highly valued. In many multinational enterprises (MNEs), they constitute a major portion of the business's value. The intra-firm transfer pricing process for patent-related royalty payments is moreover often highly intransparent and patents thus represent a major source of profit shifting opportunities between multinational entities. For both reasons, MNEs have an incentive to locate their patents at low-tax affiliates to minimize the corporate tax burden. The purpose of our paper is to empirically test for this relationship by exploiting a unique dataset that links information on patent applications to micro panel data for European MNEs. Our results suggest that the corporate tax rate (differential to other group members) exerts a negative effect on the number of patent applications filed by a multinational affiliate. The effect is quantitatively large and robust to controlling for firm size and unobserved heterogeneity between the entities. The findings moreover prevail if we account for royalty withholding taxes and binding ‘Controlled Foreign Company’ rules.

Social Networks of Innovation in the European Periphery. Exploring Independent versus Corporate Patents in Spain circa 1820-1939

There is a widespread idea that corporations have completely taken over invention and innovation processes throughout the twentieth century, thus becoming the main users of patent systems. However, recent studies suggest that, in spite of corporate expansion, independent invention is still economically significant nowadays, and that individuals outside the boundaries of the firm were actually the principal source of innovation before World War II. This article analyzes the history of corporate and independent patents in Spain in the long-term, in order to confirm that independents were also very relevant to promoting innovation and technology transfer in latecomers with high rates of technological dependence. Employing a new method of work with patent files, we also offer new historical evidence of the structure, effectiveness and scope of emerging international social networks of innovation. After introducing the research framework, Section Two briefly summarizes the characteristics of the Spanish patent system, and compares corporate and independent patents taken out between 1820 and 1939. Section Three studies the duration and strength of independent patents and the structure of the communities of innovation, and the conclusions make up Section Four.

How important are noncorporate patents? A comparative analysis using patent citations data

This article analyses the innovative performances of noncorporate inventors using patent citations data from the European Patent Office. The results show that inventions patented outside an established corporate framework are on average less ‘important’ than corporate patents, but with large variations across technology classes. Patents applied for by independent inventors, start-ups and corporate firms are of comparable ‘quality’ in emerging technologies. The results also highlight that in these fields noncorporate patents are more ‘radical’ than corporate patents.

Empirical Analysis of University Patenting in Korea

Recently Korean universities show very rapid increases in both patents and RD but the Korean unversity patents are not distinguishable in terms of basicness. The paper estimated the citation frequency function－an empirical model which was firstly developed by Caballero and Jaffe (1993) and later articulated by Jaffe and Trajtenberg (1996, 2002). The model is specified mainly composed of two interacting parts－diffusion effect and obsolescence effect of new ideas or innovations. Estimation results show that differences in forward citations between university and corporate patents are not statistically significant, after controlling self-citation. Since forward citations represent the quality of patents, this estimation result implies that there are no statistically significant quality differences between university and corporate patents. Prior research results, based on the same model of citation frequency function, about US and some European cases show that, in terms of forward citations, university patents are generally superior to corporate patents－for the case of US- or, the former not inferior to the latter－for the case of most of Europe. It is argued that some important and significant policy changes caused the rapid rise of university patents in Korea. Policy changes include the revision of technology transfer act allowing the ownership of publicly-funded research results to researchers and the changes in faculty/professor evaluation which gives more credit to the number of patents. These policy changes have triggered the rapid growth of the number of university patents. The results of the empirical analysis in this paper indicated that Korea now needs to make further efforts to enhance the quality of university patents, not just to produce more numbers of patents.

Why Challenge the Ivory Tower? New Evidence on the Basicness of Academic Patents*

SUMMARYWhile often presumed in academic literature and policy discussions there is little empirical evidence showing that academic patents protect more basic inventions than corporate patents. This study provides new evidence on the basicness of academic patents using German professor patents linked to patent opposition data from the European Patent Office (EPO). Patent oppositions are the most important mechanism by which the validity of patents filed at the EPO can be challenged. Controlling for patent value, asymmetric information and diverging expectations between the opposition parties, the likelihood of a potentially litigious situation and the relative costs of opposition versus settlement, we find that academic patents are opposed less frequently than a control group of corporate patents. This suggests that academic patents cover rather basic inventions with a low immediate commercial value not threatening current returns of potential plaintiffs. The effect is weaker for academic patents filed in collaboration with the business sector, which suggests that those patents are evaluated as more applied by owners of potentially rival technologies.

Corporate Taxation and the Choice of Patent Location within Multinational Firms

Corporate patents are perceived to be the key profit-drivers in many multinational enterprises (MNEs). Moreover, as the transfer pricing process for royalty payments is often highly intransparent, they also constitute a major source of profit shifting opportunities between multinational entities. For both reasons, MNEs have an incentive to locate their patents at affiliates with a relatively small corporate tax rate. Our paper empirically tests for this relationship by exploiting a unique dataset which links information on patent applications to micro panel data for European MNEs. Our results suggest that the corporate tax rate (differential to other group members) indeed exerts a negative effect on the number of patents filed by a subsidiary. The effect is quantitatively large and robust against controlling for affiliate size. The findings prevail if we additionally account for royalty withholding taxes. Moreover, binding ‘Controlled Foreign Company’ rules tend to decrease the number of patent applications.

Heterogeneity of patenting activity and its implications for scientific research

The increasing commercialization of university discoveries has initiated a controversy on the impact for scientific research. It has been argued that an increasing orientation towards commercialization may have a negative impact on more fundamental research efforts in science. Several scholars have therefore analyzed the relationship between publication and patenting activity of university researchers, and most articles report positive correlations between patenting and publishing activities of scientists. However, previous studies do not account for heterogeneity of patenting activities. This paper explores the incidence of patenting and publishing of scientists distinguishing between corporate patents and patents assigned to non-profit organizations for a large sample of professors active in Germany. While patents assigned to non-profit organizations (incl. individual ownership of the professors themselves) complement publication quantity and quality, patents assigned to corporations are negatively related to quantity and quality of publication output.

Knowledge diffusion from university and public research. A comparison between US, Japan and Europe using patent citations

This paper estimates the process of diffusion and decay of knowledge from university, public laboratories and corporate patents in six countries and tests the differences across countries and across technological fields using data from the European Patent Office. It finds that university and public research patents are more cited relatively to companies’ patents. However these results are mainly driven by the Chemical, Drugs & Medical, and Mechanical fields and US universities. In Europe and Japan, where the great majority of patents from public research come from national agencies, there is no evidence of a superior fertility of university and public laboratory patents vis a vis corporate patents. The distribution of the citation lags shows that knowledge embedded in university and public research patents tends to diffuse more rapidly relative to corporate ones in particular in the US, Germany, France and Japan.

Patents and corporate value creation: theoretical approach

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to provide a taxonomy of values created by corporate patents.Design/methodology/approachFollowing an extensive literature review, value created by corporate patents is analysed according to four categories: embedded in individuals; embedded in systems and structures; market; and non‐market. This paper demonstrates that the value created by a company can reside in any of these four dimensions.FindingsOne of the main findings is that value created by corporate patents can be both market and non‐market and can be embedded both in individuals and in systems and structures. Organisations can apply this framework to assess their needs and abilities with regard to value creation from patents.Research limitations/implicationsThis research sets the background for an empirical study which can be conducted to confirm the theory.Practical implicationsThe paper is a useful resource for patent managers and policy‐makers, as it provides them with a tool to analyse value embedded in patents and guidelines how to develop this value further.Originality/valueThe analysis presented here differs from the traditional evaluation of patents through patent statistics and it offers a theoretical framework which can be used by companies for the analysis of their patent portfolio. This paper provides insight into the possibilities and problems that underpin value creation from patents and shows what type of value can be created and how this value can be extracted.

Trade Secrets: Intellectual Piracy and the Origins of American Industrial Power (review)

Reviewed by: Trade Secrets: Intellectual Piracy and the Origins of American Industrial Power Christine MacLeod (bio) Trade Secrets: Intellectual Piracy and the Origins of American Industrial Power. By Doron S. Ben-Atar. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. Pp. xxi+281. $38. Doron S. Ben-Atar wears his heart on his sleeve. It's a good heart, but historically the wrong sleeve. He is rightly concerned with one of the most crucial issues of our time, the global enforcement of Western intellectual-property regimes. While infringement is still sufficiently rife to cost Western companies billions of dollars a year through the piracy and counterfeiting of both goods and software, the successful enforcement of certain corporate patents has devastating effects on people in the developing world. "In the name of protecting intellectual property," writes Ben-Atar, "Western-based companies have marshaled international agencies to enforce their claims with mind-boggling cruelty. Drug patents, in particular, are used to block access to anti-HIV/AIDS drugs in Asia and Africa" (pp. xvi-xvii). Trade Secrets aims to demonstrate that the fledgling United States of America grew rich through piracy of European intellectual property; today's corporate bullies are guilty inter alia of hypocrisy. Well, yes. It is, however, anachronistic to hang the history of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century technology transfer on this particular peg. Before the Paris Convention of 1883 (which the United States ratified in 1887) there was no international agreement covering intellectual property. At a time when national patent systems were in their infancy and patentees struggled to enforce their rights even within national boundaries, few of them could reasonably expect to benefit from their intellectual property being respected overseas; most countries in fact granted patents of first importation. Consequently, if his invention was appropriated in another country (or on another continent), the realistic inventor could claim to have suffered no material loss; humanity as a whole probably gained. What was both unjust and unrealistic was the British state's prohibition on the emigration of skilled workers as well as on the export of certain types of machinery in a vain attempt to limit foreign competition. Ben-Atar quotes Benjamin Franklin's outrage against these "tyrannical" restrictions on individual freedom of movement, which "make a Prison of England, to confine Men for no other Crime but that of being useful and Industrious" (p. 69). Franklin's principles coincided, of course, with American interest, but they were well founded in a world that was innocent of visas and migration laws based on nationality. As scholars such as David Jeremy and John Harris have demonstrated, technology was regularly transferred across international boundaries by mobile artisans; England had only recently become a net exporter of technical know-how, after centuries of catching [End Page 443] up to the European continent by welcoming such artisans with open arms. Multidirectional "industrial espionage" was normal. Moreover, an insistence on the role of technological piracy produces an unbalanced account of innovative activity in the early republic, which submerges (to the point of denial) the inventiveness of Americans under the incoming tide of European know-how. Not only did Americans adapt imported British textile technologies to suit their own different conditions, but, as Thomas Cochrane has argued, they also developed technologies in fields that Europeans neglected, not least in woodworking, milling, and steamboat design. There is also a misleading tendency here for "European" to equal "British." It is surprising not to find any discussion, for example, of the French roots of interchangeable parts at the center of the American system of manufactures, which Ken Alder's work has highlighted. Neither, unfortunately, is Ben-Atar's book a reliable guide to the history of intellectual property and industrialization. To say that "the English state did not grant patents to inventors until 1623" (p. 9) is to postdate the event by over half a century, and only a gross misreading of Eric Robinson's careful work on James Watt's critique of the inadequacies of the English patent system could result in the statement that Watt (and Matthew Boulton) "established the requirement of precise specifications" (p. 6). It is also far from the truth to suggest that...

On Patents, R & D, and the Stock Market Rate of Return

Empirical work on the causes and effects of inventive activity has had difficulty in finding measures that can indicate when and where changes in either inventive inputs or inventive output have occurred. The recent computerization of the U.S. Patent Office's data base may prove helpful in this context, but there is the problem that a priori we do not know the relationships between patent applications and economically meaningful measures of these inputs and outputs. To help solve this problem, this paper investigates the dynamic relationships among the number of successful patent applications of firms, a measure of the firm's investment in inventive activity (its R & D expenditures), and an indicator of its inventive output (the stock market value of the firm). (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)