Future Patents Research Articles

Firms’ innovation strategy under the shadow of analyst coverage

We study the effect of analyst coverage on firms’ innovation strategy and outcome. Using data of US firms from 1990 to 2012, we find evidence that an increase in financial analysts leads firms to cut research and development expenses, acquire more innovative firms, and invest in corporate venture capital. We attribute the first result to the effect of analyst pressure and the others to the informational role of analysts. We also find that financial analysts encourage firms to make more efficient investments related to innovation, which increases their future patents and citations and influences the novelty of their innovations.

The CRISPR Patent Landscape: Past, Present, and Future.

The development of CRISPR depends, in part, on the patents-past, present, and future-covering it. As for the past, the origins of the CRISPR patent landscape predate its use as a gene editing technology. Fundamental patents covering CRISPR-Cas9 as a genomic editing system did not first arise until 2012; they sparked the now canonical dispute between the University of California and the Broad Institute. The present dispute has not stopped widespread licensing of critical patents, however, bringing with it an explosion of research from both academic and commercial sectors. Whether this broad availability will persist in the future remains uncertain. The ease and reliability of CRISPR threatens many future patents as being "obvious." Nor is it clear how academic scientists and technology transfer offices will respond to the patent dispute. Like the technology itself, the future of the CRISPR patent landscape depends on researchers and their institutions.

Tracing the Evolving Trends in Electronic Skin (e-Skin) Technology Using Growth Curve and Technology Position-Based Patent Bibliometrics

Electronic skin (e-skin) technology has grown considerably over the past decade, attracting much attention as an emerging technology in the revolutionizing of the next-generation wearable devices and robots. Therefore, the tracing of the evolving characteristics of this technology up to the present time will assist researchers and R&D planners in directing their further R&D. In this paper, two patent-based bibliometric analyses are conducted to study the evolving characteristics of e-skin technology in terms of the technology life cycle and the technology position. First, a growth curve is fitted to the yearly patent registrations, thereby calculating the technology-maturity ratio, the number of potential future patents, and the expected remaining life of the e-skin technology. Second, a technology-position analysis that depicts the evolution of the core technologies and their neighborhood is performed to identify the way that new technology clusters emerge and grow over time. As a result, it is possible to identify from the inventional perspective that the technological development of the e-skin technology has entered the early maturity stage, and its expected remaining life as of the end of 2016 was estimated as 11.78 yr. In addition, several major technology clusters, including pressure-sensitive elements, semiconductor devices and fabrication, and diagnostics, which have grown considerably and show increasing technological overlaps, were identified.

Helping the Little Guy: The Impact of Government Grants on Small Technology Firms

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program provides federally funded research awards to companies with 500 or fewer employees. We explore the differential effects of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR program on firms of various sizes on their future patenting activity. Using propensity score matching, we construct comparable samples of selected and non-selected Phase II SBIR applicants by firm size. We then estimate the effect of selection for the matched sample on the probability of forward patent activity and conditional on any forward patenting, the count of patents within three years of the proposal. While firms with fewer than 10 employees, are least likely to patent, their probability of patenting is positively affected by receiving a Phase II award. We find sparse evidence of corresponding increase for larger firms. Nor do we find any evidence that a Phase II award impacts the conditional number of forward patents in the three years following the award. These data suggest that the Phase II award serves to advance the smallest teams over the hump to creating a potential source of competitive advantage.

From science to technology: The value of knowledge from different energy research institutions

Expansion of public energy R&D budgets continues to be a key component of climate policy. Using an original data set of both scientific articles and patents pertaining to three alternative energy technologies (biofuels, solar and wind energy), this paper provides new evidence on the flows of knowledge between university, private sector, and government research. Better understanding of the value of knowledge from these institutions can help decision makers target R&D funds where they are most likely to be successful. I use citation data from both scientific articles and patents to answer two questions. First, what information is most useful to the development of new technology? Does high quality science lead to applied technology development? I find that this is the case, as those articles most highly cited by other scientific articles are also more likely to be cited by future patents. Second, which institutions produce the most valuable research? Are there differences across technologies? Research performed at government institutions appears to play an important translational role linking basic and applied research, as government articles are more likely to be cited by patents than any other institution, including universities. Universities play a less important role in wind research than for solar and biofuels, suggesting that wind energy research is at a more applied stage where commercialization and final product development is more important than basic research.

The dual frontier: Patented inventions and prior scientific advance.

The extent to which scientific advances support marketplace inventions is largely unknown. We study 4.8 million U.S. patents and 32 million research articles to determine the minimum citation distance between patented inventions and prior scientific advances. We find that most cited research articles (80%) link forward to a future patent. Similarly, most patents (61%) link backward to a prior research article. Linked papers and patents typically stand 2 to 4 degrees distant from the other domain. Yet, advances directly along the patent-paper boundary are notably more impactful within their own domains. The distance metric further provides a typology of the fields, institutions, and individuals involved in science-to-technology linkages. Overall, the findings are consistent with theories that emphasize substantial and fruitful connections between patenting and prior scientific inquiry.

The Ways We've Been Measuring Patent Scope are Wrong: How to Measure and Draw Causal Inferences with Patent Scope

This paper presents an easy-to-use measure of patent scope that is grounded both in patent law and in the practices of patent attorneys. We validate our measure by showing both that patent attorneys’ subjective assessments of scope agree with our estimates, and that the behaviour of patenters is consistent with it. Using our validation exercise, we find that previous measures of patent scope (i.e. the number of patent classes, the number of citations made by future patents, and the number of claims in a patent) are uninformative or misleading. To facilitate drawing causal inferences with our measure, we show how it can be used to create an instrumental variable, patent examiner Scope Toughness, which we also validate. We then demonstrate the power of this instrument by examining standard-essential patents. We show that an (exogenous) diminishment of patent scope leads to patents being much less likely to be declared standard-essential.

Firms' Innovation Strategy under the Shadow of Analyst Coverage

We study the effect of analyst coverage on firms’ innovation strategy and outcome. By considering three different channels that allow firms to innovate: internal RD however, this negative effect becomes not significant when firms’ in-house R&D spending and external innovation channels are taken into account. We find that more financial analysts encourage firms to make more efficient investments related to innovation, which increase their future patents and citations. We address endogeneity with an instrumental variables approach and a difference-in-differences strategy where exogenous variation in analyst coverage comes from brokerage house mergers.

Cushing's Syndrome and Steroid Dementia.

Cushing's Syndrome (CS) is associated with a specific spectrum of dementia-like symptoms, including psychiatric disorders, such as major depression, anxiety and mania, and neurocognitive alterations, like impairment of memory and concentration. This pattern of clinical complications, which significantly impair the health-related quality of life of CS patients, is sometimes referred to as "steroid dementia syndrome" (SDS). The SDS is the result of anatomical and functional anomalies in brain areas involved in the processing of emotion and cognition, which are only partially restored after the biochemical remission of the disease. Therefore, periodical neuropsychiatric evaluations are recommended in all CS patients, and a long-term follow-up is required after normalization of hypercortisolism. Recent evidences demonstrate that three classes of drugs (glucocorticoid receptor antagonists, steroidogenesis inhibitors, and pituitary tumor-targeted drugs), which are used for medical treatment of CS, can rapidly relief neuropsychiatric symptoms of SDS. Furthermore, several psychoactive medications have demonstrated effectiveness in the treatment of symptoms induced by the acute or chronic glucocosteroid administration. In this paper, a review of the current and future patents for the treatment and prevention of CS and SDS will be presented.

Knowledge spillovers through inventor mobility: the effect on firm-level patenting

Labor mobility is heralded as a key channel of knowledge spillovers between firms. However, the empirical evidence on labor mobility’s effects on firm performance leaves many unanswered questions. In this paper, we analyze the effect of inventor mobility on firm-level patenting activity by studying a sample of European RD however, hiring inventors with several prior patents and different kinds of technological expertise contributes to firms’ future patenting. Furthermore, hiring inventors from actively patenting firms contributes to future patenting. We also find that outbound mobility of inventors weakens the source firm’s patenting performance, especially when the firm loses inventors who have been highly productive, have worked in the firm’s core field of technology or move to technologically similar firms.

The Last and Next Decades of the Asian Core Program on Cutting‐Edge Organic Chemistry in Asia

The Last and Next Decades of the Asian Core Program on Cutting‐Edge Organic Chemistry in Asia

Is Earnings Guidance Associated with Less Firm Innovation?

We inform the policy debate on whether management earnings guidance fosters managerial myopia by examining whether firms providing earnings guidance exhibit less firm innovation. At the core of the debate is whether guidance impedes long-term value creation, and evidence on the association between guidance and innovation addresses this central issue as firm innovation is a key driver of firms’ competitiveness and long-term economic growth. Using a propensity-score matching design and a pair-matching design to address the endogeneity concern that other firm characteristics can drive the relation between future innovation and current guidance, we find that earnings guiders exhibit a greater number of future patents and patent citations than matched non-guiders. This result holds for firms issuing quarterly guidance and more frequent guidance. Further analysis using a Heckman two-stage procedure to address the impact of unobservable correlated omitted variables and a difference-in-differences design to address potential reverse causality yields similar results. Overall, our findings suggest that management earnings guidance alleviates managerial myopia rather than exacerbates it.

The Unified Patent Court (UPC) in Action - How Will the Design of the UPC Affect Patent Law?

The new common judiciary for European patents (UPC) will play a crucial role in the future European patent system. The UPC will be a very specialised court that i.a. recruits judges from specialists’ circles and has as part of its mission to develop a coherent and autonomous body of case law. The article points out that the UPC because of this design will be biased towards technology based values and uniformity at the expense of other values and interests e.g. non-economic public interests, and values associated with diversity. The practical effects of these biases are analysed regarding cases involving ordre public and morality and scope of protection. The article shows that the biases will affect the law in all the areas discussed and that if unchecked they will reduce some of the “wriggling room” which the current system has provided. To maintain that room a focused effort by the UPC to neutralise the effects of the biases is needed. Lastly, concrete steps to achieve this rebalancing are proposed.

Recent Advances in Antiarrhythmic Drug Treatment of Atrial Fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most prevalent sustained cardiac arrhythmia in clinical practice associated with significant morbidity and mortality. With the growing number of the affected individuals, the development of safe and effective treatment options for AF has become a worldwide priority. Currently available antiarrhythmic medications for the restoration and maintenance of sinus rhythm have limitations due to the modest efficacy and a potential for adverseeffects. Although substantial progress has been made in AF-ablation techniques, broad application of these nonpharmacological treatment modalities is limited and antiarrhythmic drug treatment is still the cornerstone and the first-line therapy for the majority of AF patients. Improvements in the understanding of the principal pathophysiological mechanisms of AF obtained in the last several years have provided promising treatment opportunities. New therapeutic options are based on the more selective targeting of ion channels and intercellular connection proteins predominantly expressed in the atria, the restoration of intracellular Ca(2+) homeostasis and the prevention of AF-associated electrical and structural remodeling. In this review, we provide a highlight of the most important pathophysiological mechanisms in AF with a relation to the potential therapeutic interventions, and discuss novel findings regarding the current and future pharmacological AF management and recent patents.

Mining Sarcomas by Proteomics Approaches: Ewing Sarcoma on the Spotlight

Sarcomas are a class of tumors defined by their mesenchymal origin that comprise very different neoplasms. Although some sarcomas harbor pathogenomic molecular alterations (i.e. specific balanced translocations and their associated chimeric fusion genes), others still lack an ultimate diagnostic tool, which could be of great interest as in some cases different sarcomas share a similar clinical manifestation. High throughput tools are contributing new ways to molecularly delineate the boundaries of each sarcoma subtype. Moreover, they are also shedding light into other research subjects of immediate concern: (i) the elucidation of the molecular targets of chimeric fusion proteins and their interactome; (ii) the discovery of new biomarkers and therapeutic targets; and (iii) the delineation of the response to therapeutic agents. Here we review the application of proteomics approaches to sarcomas, with special emphasis in Ewing sarcoma. Proteomics strategies offer the focus, the analytical potential, and the high throughput capabilities to decipher the hidden agenda of the biology of sarcomas, a knowledge that will surely be the subject of future patents intended to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic tools.

Research grants, sources of ideas and the effects on academic research

Based on a sample of research units in science and engineering at German universities, this study reports survey evidence on the relationship between research grants and research content. Research units that receive funds from industry are more likely to source ideas from the private sector. The higher the share of industry funding in a unit's total budget, the more likely it is that large firms influence the research agenda. Public research grants, on the other hand, are associated with a higher importance of conferences and scientific sources. What is more, the different sources of ideas impact scientific output. Research units that source research ideas from small- and medium-sized firms patent more, but are not more successful than others in terms of the impact of their inventions on future patents. If, on the other hand, research units source ideas from large firms, we find them to publish less and with lower impact on future scientific work.

Review of Recent Patents on Wearable Movement Sensors

Advances in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), solid-state, wireless, and battery technologies have made possible the development of a new generation of portable, low-power, wireless, and high-capacity movement sensors with significant potential in a variety of medical applications. This article includes a review of recent patents focused on novel wearable movement sensors appropriate for biomedical applications involving motion capture, activity recognition, and objective analysis of movement disorders. The paper focuses on the technical challenges associated with the hardware design of these devices in the context of movement disorders, and the solutions disclosed in patents and patent applications. Additionally, the paper provides a discussion of future developments and the outstanding technical challenges that would need to be overcome for the widespread use of movement sensors in research and clinical settings. Our patent search revealed that a total of 958 issued patents and 664 patent applications have been published by the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) in subclass US600/595 (body monitoring). Since 2007, 34 patents were issued and 342 patent applications were published (378 patent publications) in this subclass, indicating that nearly 25% of the patented or patent pending developments in movement monitoring occurred in the last 3.5 years. Despite the significant developments in this area, none of the patent publications analyzed disclosed wearable movement sensors that overcome some of the most significant technical challenges such as the problem of wireless synchronization of sampling times among multiple sensors. Consequently, valuable intellectual property remains to be developed and claimed in future patents in this technical field. Keywords: Actigraphers, activity monitoring, inertial measurement units (IMUs), inertial sensors, orientation measurement unit (OMUs), movement sensors, motion capture, movement disorders, robust wireless data transfer, wearable sensors.

Patent text mining and informetric-based patent technology morphological analysis: an empirical study

Patent technology morphological analysis utilises the advantages of both patent information analysis and morphological analysis to provide more detailed information on current and future patent technology. Current patent technology morphological analysis methods are largely reliant on manual expertise in the construction of morphological boxes with few approaches to the evaluation of future morphological configurations. We developed a patent text mining and informetric-based patent technology morphological analysis technique. We defined the basic parameters of the morphological box as the factors in factor analysis, with a patent keywords matrix, and the clusters in clustering analysis with factor scores. Patent citation, year of patent registration, keyword frequency, and contributing factors were used to evaluate future morphological configurations. We used an empirical study of liquid crystal display wide viewing angle patents to validate our method. The Thomson Reuters Derwent Innovation Index was used to collect patent text datasets. Our study indicates that this method is feasible for the implementation of patent technology morphological analysis. Our method provides advantages in terms of cost and time reductions during morphological box construction and more flexible methods for evaluating morphological configurations. We discuss problems and possible development of our method in the last section.

Pharmacological Therapies for Cataract and Refractive Errors: Landscaping Niches of Ocular Drug Patenting

We have used a focused and comprehensive ophthalmology patent database to characterize the international patenting landscape dedicated to the pharmacological treatment of cataract, corneal opacities and dystrophies, and complicated refractive errors. A total of 201 disclosures related to cataract or corneal clouding (published between 1982 and 2011), and 99 documents (published between 1991 and 2011) related to refractive or geometry errors were identified. Current applications for the treatment or prevention of primary cataract have ceased to address diabetic cataract specifically through the inhibition of glycation-specific mechanisms. The most innovative approaches for pharmacotherapy of the lens focus on phase separation inhibitors, modulators of the TGF-β pathway, and matrix metalloproteinase inhibition. Patenting for the prevention of secondary cataracts as a delayed complication of intraocular lens insertion follows similar routes. For keratoconus, progressive myopia and Avellino corneal dystrophy, the focus remains on efficiently stabilizing the corrected shape of the cornea in the course of orthokeratology treatments. We expect future patenting in the fields of our investigation to concentrate more heavily on molecular medicine, in close lockstep with biotechnology and genetic testing.

Research Grants, Sources of Ideas and the Effects on Academic Research

Based on a sample of research units in science and engineering at German universities, this study reports survey evidence showing that research grants impact research content. Research units that receive funds from industry are more likely to source ideas from the private sector. The higher the share of industry funding on the units' total budget, the more likely that large firms influenced the research agenda. Public research grants, on the other hand, are associated with a higher importance of conferences and scientific sources. What is more, the different sources of ideas impact scientific output. Research units that source research ideas from small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) patent more, but not more successful than others in terms of the impact of their inventions on future patents. If, on the other hand, research units source ideas from large firms we find them to publish less and with lower impact on future scientific work.