Events

Post-grant validity challenges at patent offices rely on the private initiative of third parties to correct mistakes made by patent offices. We hypothesize that incentives to bring post-grant validity challenges are reduced when many firms benefit from revocation of a patent and when firms are caught up in patent thickets. Using data on opposition against patents at the European Patent Office we show that opposition decreases in fields in which many others profit from patent revocations. Moreover, in fields with a large number of mutually blocking patents the incidence of opposition is sharply reduced, particularly among large firms and firms that are caught up directly in patent thickets. These findings indicate that post-grant patent review may not constitute an effective correction device for erroneous patent grants in technologies affected by either patent thickets or highly dispersed patent ownership.

Recent research on the economics of patents is surveyed. The topics covered include theoretical and empirical evidence on patents as incentives for innovation, the effectiveness of patents for invention disclosure, patent valuation, and the design of patent systems. We also look at some current policy areas, including software and business method patents, university patenting, and the growth in patent litigation.

We use a rich longitudinal dataset on department-level productivity in a contemporary field of science to identify and decompose the causal impact of hiring a star on local knowledge production. Specifically, we estimate the relative roles of knowledge spillovers versus recruiting externalities as they affect co-located researchers who are related or unrelated to the star in idea space. Hiring a star does not increase overall incumbent productivity, but this aggregate effect hides off setting effects on colleagues who are related (positive) versus unrelated (negative). Star hires improve subsequent joiner quality for both related and unrelated scientists, although the effect is significantly larger for related scientists. The overall positive impact of the star on department-level productivity is mainly due to joiner-quality effects. Furthermore, the productivity impact is more pronounced at mid- and lower-ranked institutions, suggesting implications for the optimal spatial organization of science and university strategies aimed at ascending departmental rankings.

The Munich Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research (MCIER) at the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law cordially invites you to the seminar of Professor Marie Thursby, Ph.D. and Professor Jerry Thursby, Ph.D. (Georgia Institute of Technology, Scheller College of Business, University of Atlanta).