Veranstaltungen

In a complex and dynamic technological environment, firms are often unable to sustain continuous high levels of productivity over long periods of time without accessing knowledge from beyond their boundaries; even leading firms require external knowledge to develop new innovations.  In the pharmaceutical industry, for instance, an increasing proportion of firm revenue is generated from products derived from technology discovered outside the firm. Ceccagnoli et al. (2010) support this notion: in 60 percent of new branded drugs introduced over a 20-year period, more than half of the patents protecting them originated outside the firm.  More specifically, Edwards et al. (2003) report that virtually all drugs with biotechnology origins emanate, in fact, from universities.  It is likely, however, that this dependence is understated because the analysis focused only on patents attached to new products identified in the FDA Orange Book.  Nonetheless, it demonstrates the critical importance placed on the supply of new technologies through the earlier stages of the external research value chain.

Our focus is on the flow of technologies out of university (non-profit) labs to biotechnology firms and from there on to pharmaceutical firms. Given that few biotechnology firms have the resources and complementary assets to fully develop products it is expected that most externally generated products will pass through this downstream gateway. More specifically, we focus not only on the supply of projects from universities to biotechnology firms but also on the supply of projects that make it to the second link between biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms and, more importantly, several underlying characteristics of these inventions (e.g., stage of development, disease category and NIH funding).

When licensed to firms, university biotechnology inventions are typically very early stage. As such, technical development is necessary before the invention can be marketed. The uncertainty typically discussed is either technological uncertainty (that is, will the invention work) or market uncertainty (that is, will the product be profitable). We demonstrate in this paper that a third type of uncertainty, entrepreneurial uncertainty) is also very important. Entrepreneurial uncertainty is uncertainty as to the applicability of the invention (the application for which it is, in fact, useful--in this context, disease category). For example, a technology might be license from the university to the biotechnology firm for use in cancer, but when sublicensed to a second firm, the disease category might be cardiovascular.

In this paper we examine changes in the stage of development and disease indication from initial to sublicense. We estimate econometric models explaining whether a licensed inventions is sublicensed as well as the time between the patent priority date and the initial license and the time between the initial license to sublicense. Independent variables include stage of development, disease category, license characteristics (exclusivity, payment terms, etc.), National Institutes of Health funding, etc.

Trademarks (TMs) shape the competitive landscape of markets for goods and services in all countries through branding and conveying information and quality inherent in products. Yet, researchers are largely unable to conduct rigorous empirical analysis of TMs in the global economy because TM data and economic data are organized differently and cannot be analyzed jointly at the industry or sector level. We propose an ‘Algorithmic Links with Probabilities’ (ALP) approach to match TM data to economic data and enable these data to speak to each other. Specifically, we construct a NICE Class Level concordance that maps TM data into trade and industry categories forward and backward. This concordance allows researchers to analyze differences in TM usage across both economic and TM sectors. In this paper, we apply this ALP concordance for TMs to characterize patterns in TM applications across countries and industries. We use the concordance to investigate some of the key determinants of international technology transfer by comparing bilateral TM applications and bilateral patent applications. We find that international patenting and TM strategies largely conform with domestic patterns with significant differences in intellectual property usage across sectors. We conclude with a discussion of possible extensions of this work, including deeper indicator-level concordances and further analyses that are possible once TM data are linked with economic activity data.

While Schumpeter is the most quoted author in ongoing academic debates on innovation and entrepreneurship, those who cite him almost always catch the letter, but miss the spirit, of his work. This is especially true for his early writings. My aim is to strip away some conventional ideas about what should count as "Schumpeterian", or "Neo-Schumpeterian" -- in order to reveal again Schumpeter as a radical thinker -- and to argue why he is still, after more than 100 years, the best starting point by far today for anyone wanting to understand what I call "deep innovation".

Cumulative innovation is a driving force of economic growth. Access costs, the time and effort scientists need to devote to understand existing knowledge, may potentially hinder new innovation. I examine the effect of a decrease in access costs resulting from the adoption of a data reporting standard Minimum Information About a Microarray Experiment (MIAME) on subsequent life sciences research. I take advantage of a natural experiment to implement a difference-in-differences estimate of MIAME on subsequent use of data in journal publications. The results show that microarray data submitted after a journal adopts MIAME is at least 50 percent more likely to be reused. Overall, the evidence suggests that the decline of access costs due to data reporting standards is important for the accumulation of knowledge in the life sciences.

Founders’ interpretive schemes affect emerging organizations in fundamental ways, because they provide  the cognitive lens through which founders define the purposes and critical features of their organizations. By conducting an in-depth, qualitative study of the emergence process of 25 technology ventures, we extend prior work in several ways. First, we show how founders diverge in the scope of their interpretive schemes, as some make sense of their firms in a narrow way (focused on one organizational path), whereas others view their firms through either a broad lens (variety generating, experimentation with multiple paths) or vague lens (variety generating, exploration of multiple paths). Second, we find that differences in the scope of founders’ interpretive schemes have important ramifications for both the organizational emergence process (because the founders’ schemes become embodied in their organizations’ structures) and its outcomes (because new organizations first need to find “fertile ground” that allows them to become viable entities). In particular, our results show that ventures established on the basis of broad and vague interpretive schemes will possess greater ability to change and adapt over time – which is of importance because most firms in our sample had to engage in fundamental re-orientation within three years after founding – and that the former can make greater progress on their journey to viable organizations than the narrow or vague types. These results help to advance theory on organizational emergence, and provide key insights to recent discussions about the role of experimentation in entrepreneurship.

Der Nutzen des Patentrechts ist heute nicht unumstritten. Die sogenannten Patentkriege in der Mobilfunktechnologie rufen bei Vielen Stirnrunzeln hervor; Softwarepatente sind unter Beschuss - und zwar parteiübergreifend; das Durchsetzen von Patenten hat sich zu einem eigenen Geschäftszweig entwickelt; und Patentportfolios werden für enorme Summen gehandelt. Gleichzeitig werden so viele Patente angemeldet wie noch nie. Es stellt sich somit die Frage, ob das Patentrecht neue Aufgaben übernommen hat und wie diese neuen Aufgaben mit dessen ursprünglichen Zielen vereinbar sind.

Beat Weibel wurde 1966 geboren. Er studierte Elektrotechnik an der ETH Zürich, war ab 1991 Patentanwaltskandidat bei ABB in der Schweiz und ist seit 1995 Europäischer Patentanwalt. Von 1998 bis 2000 war er Leiter der Corporate IP der Georg Fischer AG, von 2000 bis 2007 Leiter des IP Departments von ABB Schweiz und von 2007 bis 2012 Chief IP Counsel von ABB. Seit Januar 2013 ist er Leiter des Corporate Intellectual Property Departments der Siemens AG. Er ist Dozent für Patentrecht an der ETH Zürich sowie der Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften.

The research project integrates the following three areas: 1. IP strategy including IP investment (patenting, trademark registration) and its enforcement, 2. marketing strategy including market expansion path and market selection, and 3. technology management. The case study covers companies from the US, China, Japan, and Germany.

Nikolaus Thumm is chairman of the European Commision Expert Group on Patent Aggregation. This group was convened by the European Commission to investigate whether there is a need for a European Commission intervention to foster the development of IP markets, in particular through aggregation of patents, with a focus on patent pools and funds. The premise is that some patents would be more valuable, or would be more likely to be used, if they were aggregated, that is, if patents belonging to different owners were gathered together in such a way that single entities or groups could act as licensors of all the patents, or of as many of them as might attract the attention of potential licensees. The development of the market in patents and licences should be understood as the enhanced application of patents and licences to drive innovation as well as maximise returns to entities that are actively engaged in R&D, in particular small and medium sized entities, that may not have the marketing and legal potential to fully exploit and enforce their individual or limited number of patents.

Das Recht des Geheimnisschutzes ist in einem schlechten Zustand. Das deutsche Recht mit seinen strafrechtlichen Schutzvorschriften in §§ 17 ff. UWG ist veraltet und unübersichtlich, seine prozessuale Durchsetzung bereitet Schwierigkeiten. In der Literatur erwacht das Interesse an diesem Rechtsgebiet erst langsam. Zahlreiche Grundlagenfragen sind ungeklärt. Innerhalb Europas unterscheiden sich die Schutzsysteme ganz erheblich. Letzteres könnte sich bald ändern. Die Kommission hat im November 2013 den Entwurf einer Richtlinie zum Schutz von Geschäftsgeheimnissen vorgelegt, mit dem sie versucht, den sicheren Kurs zwischen zwei Felsen zu finden: einem absoluten Ausschließlichkeitsrecht an geheimer Information, das weder überzeugend noch politisch durchsetzbar wäre, und einem zu weichen Schutz mit Durchsetzungsdefiziten. Dieser Entwurf soll vorgestellt, kritisch analysiert und in den größeren Kontext von Grundsatzfragen des Geheimnisschutzes eingeordnet werden.

Ansgar Ohly ist Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für Bürgerliches Recht, Recht des Geistigen Eigentums und Wettbewerbsrecht an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München und ständiger Gastprofessor an der University of Oxford. Außerdem lehrt er am MIPLC und am CEIPI in Straßburg. Bis zu seiner Promotion an der LMU war er Stipendiat des MPI, während seiner Habilitationszeit leitete er das Commonwealth-Referat des Instituts. Von 2002 bis 2012 war er Professor an der Universität Bayreuth und Mitbegründer des DFG-Graduiertenkollegs „Geistiges Eigentum und Gemeinfreiheit“. Er interessiert sich für die Grundlagen und alle Teilbereiche des geistigen Eigentums ebenso wie für das Lauterkeitsrecht, ganz besonders aber für den Überlagerungsbereich von Immaterialgüter- und Lauterkeitsrecht, in den neben dem UWG-Leistungsschutz auch der Geheimnisschutz fällt.

We measure the size of knowledge spillovers of R&D activities done by venture capital financed start-ups and compare them quantitatively to spillovers of conventional corporate R&D. We suggest a novel measure to identify the appropriate spillover pool based on backward citations which reflect learning between firms. Using panel data of U.S. firms we show that venture capital financed R&D generates significant spillovers on the patent production of other firms. Counterfactual estimates suggest that the spillovers generated by VC-financed firms are more than 50% larger than those generated by established companies. We address potential endogeneity concerns with an instrumental variable strategy using changes in federal and state tax incentives as instrumental variable for R&D and past fund raising as instrument for venture capital investment.