Prof. Dietmar Harhoff, Ph.D.

Artikel in referierten Fachzeitschriften

Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar; Sorg, Stefan; Graevenitz, Georg von (2024). Patents, Freedom to Operate, and Follow-on Innovation: Evidence from Post-Grant Opposition, Management Science 2024, forthcoming.

• We study the blocking effect of patents on follow-on innovation by others. We posit that follow-on innovation requires freedom to operate (FTO), which firms typically obtain through a license from the patentee holding the original innovation. Where licensing fails, follow-on innovation is blocked unless
  firms gain FTO through patent invalidation. Using large-scale data from post-grant oppositions at the European Patent Office, we find that patent invalidation increases follow-on innovation, measured in citations, by 16% on average. This effect exhibits a U-shape in the value of the original innovation.
  For patents on low-value original innovations, invalidation predominantly increases low-value follow-on innovation outside the patentee’s product market. Here, transaction costs likely exceed the joint surplus of licensing, causing licensing failure. In contrast, for patents on high-value original innovations,
  invalidation mainly increases high-value follow-on innovation in the patentee’s product market. We attribute this latter result to rent dissipation, which renders patentees unwilling to license out valuable technologies to (potential) competitors.
• Also published as: CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper, No. 494

Potts, Jason; Torrance, Andrew; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hippel, Eric von (2023). Profiting from Data Commons: Theory, Evidence, and Strategy Implications, Strategy Science 2023. DOI

• We define data commons as repositories of freely-accessible, “open source” innovation-related data, information and knowledge. Data commons are and can be a significant resource for both innovating and innovation-adopting firms and individuals. First, the availability of free data and information from such commons reduces the innovation-specific private or open investment required to access the data and make the next innovative advance. Second, the fact that the data are freely accessible lowers transactions costs substantially. In this paper, we draw on the theory and empirical evidence regarding innovation commons in general and data commons in particular. Based on these foundations, we consider strategic decisions in the private and public domain: how can individuals, firms and societies profit from data commons? We first discuss the varying nature of and contents of data commons, their functioning, and the value they provide to private innovators and to social welfare. We next explore the several types of data commons extant today, and their mechanisms of action. We find that those who develop innovation-related information at private cost already have, surprisingly often, an economic incentive to freely reveal their information to a data commons. However, we also find and discuss important exceptions. We conclude with suggestions regarding needed innovation research, data commons “engineering”, and innovation policymaking that could together increase private and social welfare via enhancement of data commons.

Petty, Jeffrey S.; Gruber, Marc; Harhoff, Dietmar (2023). Maneuvering the Odds: The Dynamics of Venture Capital Decision-Making, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 17 (2), 239-265. DOI

• This paper investigates venture capital decision-making, a process that occurs under changing conditions and limited, ambiguous information. We shed new light on the inherent dynamics of this strategic process. One of the key distinguishing features of our study is its unprecedented access to the internal decision-making process of a venture capital firm. By analyzing unique, longitudinal data capturing 2,383 proposal selection processes conducted over the life of one venture capital fund, we show how decision-making speed and the information cues that decision makers rely upon will, over time, change in systematic and predictable ways. Specifically, our approach allows us to identify fundamental, unexplored patterns with respect to the selection process as a whole and the multiple stages within the process
• Each year venture capitalists receive hundreds of investment proposals, but is every proposal received by a venture capitalist processed equally? In this study, we show how the source of a proposal and the available amount of investment capital, factors that are not contained within the pages of a proposal, may influence the investment decision making process. Our results highlight the impact of being referred to a venture capitalist by a trusted source, as more time is spent evaluating these proposals and they proceed further along in the process. We also find that venture capitalists process proposals more quickly as the capital in the fund is invested over the life of the fund.

Fritz, Cornelius; De Nicola, Giacomo; Kevork, Sevag; Harhoff, Dietmar; Kauermann, Göran (2023). Modelling the Large and Dynamically Growing Bipartite Network of German Patents and Inventors, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A: Statistics in Society, 186 (3), 557-576. DOI

• To explore the driving forces behind innovation, we analyse the dynamic bipartite network of all inventors and patents registered within the field of electrical engineering in Germany in the past two decades. To deal with the sheer size of the data, we decompose the network by exploiting the fact that most inventors tend to only stay active for a relatively short period. We thus propose a Temporal Exponential Random Graph Model with time-varying actor set and sufficient statistics mirroring substantial expectations for our analysis. Our results corroborate that inventor characteristics and team formation are essential to the dynamics of invention.
• Also published as arXiv preprint 2201.09744

Brachtendorf, Lorenz; Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar (2023). Truly Standard-Essential Patents? - A Semantics-Based Analysis, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 32 (1), 132-157. DOI

• Standard-essential patents (SEPs) have become a key element of technical coordination via standard-setting organizations. Yet, in many cases, it remains unclear whether a declared SEP is truly standard-essential. To date, there is no automated procedure that allows for a scalable and objective assessment of SEP status. This paper introduces a semantics-based method for approximating the standard essentiality of patents. We provide details on the procedure that generates the measure of standard essentiality and present the results of several validation and robustness exercises. We illustrate the measure's usefulness in estimating the share of true SEPs in firm patent portfolios for several telecommunication standards.
• Also published as: CEPR Discussion Paper DP14726

Schlegel, Tobias; Pfister, Curdin; Harhoff, Dietmar; Backes-Gellner, Uschi (2022). Innovation Effects of Universities of Applied Sciences: an Assessment of Regional Heterogeneity, The Journal of Technology Transfer, 47 (1), 43-118. DOI

• The literature on the economics of science and technology shows that academic universities—institutions focusing on basic research—positively affect innovation activities in regional economies. Less is known about the innovation effects of universities of applied sciences (UASs)—bachelor-granting three-year colleges teaching and conducting applied research. Furthermore, the evidence for positive innovation effects is predominantly based on average effects, while heterogeneity in innovation effects due to the economic environment is far less considered. By exploiting a public policy development in Switzerland that led to the quasi-random establishment of UASs, we investigate the regional heterogeneity in innovation effects of these UASs. We rely on patent and business census data and analyze the influence and importance of three economic preconditions—labor market size, labor market density and high tech intensity—on innovation effects of UASs. Our results show that only regions with a large or a dense enough labor market or with an above average high tech intensity experience significant innovation effects of UASs. Comparing the relative importance of the three economic preconditions, we find that labor market size is the most important factor that drives heterogeneity in innovation effects of UASs.
• Also published as: Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0161 under the Title: Heterogeneous Regional Innovation Spillovers of Universities of Applied Sciences

Bauer, Verena; Harhoff, Dietmar; Kauermann, Göran (2022). A Smooth Dynamic Network Model for Patent Collaboration Data, AStA - Advances in Statistical Analysis, 106, 97-116. DOI

• The development and application of models, which take the evolution of networks with a dynamical structure into account are receiving increasing attention. Our research focuses on a profile likelihood approach to model time-stamped event data for a large-scale network applied on patent collaborations. As event we consider the submission of a joint patent and we investigate the driving forces for collaboration between inventors. We propose a flexible semiparametric model, which allows to include covariates built from the network (i.e. collaboration) history.
• Also published in arXiv

Pfister, Curdin; Rinawi, Miriam; Harhoff, Dietmar; Backes-Gellner, Uschi (2021). Regional Innovation Effects of Applied Research Institutions, Research Policy, 50 (4). DOI

• We analyze the effect of applied research institutions on regional innovation activity. Exploiting a policy reform that created tertiary education institutions conducting applied research, the Universities of Applied Sciences (UASs) in Switzerland, we apply difference-in-differences estimations to investigate their effect on innovation quantity and quality. Findings show a 6.8% increase in regional patenting activity (i.e., quantity), and an increase of patent quality of up to 9.7% (measured by patent family size, and the number of claims, and citations per patent). Findings are robust to various model specifications, suggesting that applied research taught in UASs boosts regional innovation.
• Also published as: Working Paper / Swiss Leading House No. 117

Gaessler, Fabian; Hall, Bronwyn H.; Harhoff, Dietmar (2021). Should There Be Lower Taxes on Patent Income?, Research Policy 50. DOI

• A “patent box” is a term for the application of a lower corporate tax rate to the income derived from the ownership of patents. This tax subsidy instrument has been introduced in a number of countries since 2000. Using comprehensive data on patents filed at the European Patent Office, including information on ownership transfers pre- and post-grant, we investigate the impact of the introduction of a patent box on international patent transfers, on the choice of ownership location, and on innovative activity in the relevant country. We find that the impact on transfers is small but present, especially when the tax instrument does not contain a development condition and for high value patents (those most likely to have generated income), but that innovation as proxied by R&D and patents is not affected. We also find that introducing a patent box reduces patent transfers out of the country. These results call into question whether the patent box is an effective instrument for encouraging innovation in a country, rather than simply preventing or facilitating the shifting of corporate income to low tax jurisdictions.
• Also published as Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 18-18

Dorner, Matthias; Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Poege, Felix (2020). Filling the Gap - Firm Strategies for Human Capital Loss, Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings, 2020 (1), 2020 (1)71. DOI

• This paper explores how the premature death of an inventor affects the productivity and career trajectories of co-inventors. To this end, we develop and analyze a dataset covering the careers of 152,350 German inventors. The data combine highly precise employer-employee data from official social security registers with patent office information covering the period from 1980-2014. Departing from 799 registered premature deaths of inventors and the same number of matched inventors, we study how co-inventors were affected by the death of their peers. Using a difference-in-differences and an event study design, we investigate the reaction of the co-inventors' patenting activities, career advancement and job mobility. Using a number of measures and robustness checks, our results show that the premature death of a co-inventor reduces the productivity of the surviving co-inventors. The effect sets in immediately and survivors do not seem to recover from the shock in the five years following. We argue that employers will seek to retain co-inventors under certain conditions in order to continue lines of research and invention. The empirical results confirm our expectations: surviving inventors are significantly less likely to move to a different employer and are more likely to be promoted compared to inventors in the control group. These effects seem to diminish after about two years."

Poege, Felix; Harhoff, Dietmar; Gaessler, Fabian; Baruffaldi, Stefano Horst (2019). Science Quality and the Value of Inventions, Science Advances, 5 (12), eaay7323. DOI

• Despite decades of research, the relationship between the quality of science and the value of inventions has remained unclear. We present the result of a large-scale matching exercise between 4.8 million patent families and 43 million publication records. We find a strong positive relationship between quality of scientific contributions referenced in patents and the value of the respective inventions. We rank patents by the quality of the science they are linked to. Strikingly, high-rank patents are twice as valuable as low-rank patents, which in turn are about as valuable as patents without direct science link. We show this core result for various science quality and patent
  value measures. The effect of science quality on patent value remains relevant even when science is linked indirectly through other patents. Our findings imply that what is considered “excellent” within the science sector also leads to outstanding outcomes in the technological or commercial realm.
• Also published as: arXiv preprint 1903.05020
• Article: Excellence Breeds Invention, Research Europe 510 (2020), 11

Mueller-Langer, Frank; Fecher, Benedikt; Harhoff, Dietmar; Wagner, Gert G. (2019). Replication Studies in Economics — How Many and Which Papers Are Chosen for Replication, and Why?, Research Policy, 48 (1), 62-83. DOI

• We investigate how often replication studies are published in empirical economics and what types of
  journal articles are replicated. We find that between 1974 and 2014 0.1% of publications in the top 50
  economics journals were replication studies. We consider the results of published formal replication
  studies (whether they are negating or reinforcing) and their extent: Narrow replication studies are
  typically devoted to mere replication of prior work, while scientific replication studies provide a
  broader analysis. We find evidence that higher-impact articles and articles by authors from leading
  institutions are more likely to be replicated, whereas the replication probability is lower for articles that
  appeared in top 5 economics journals. Our analysis also suggests that mandatory data disclosure
  policies may have a positive effect on the incidence of replication.
• Also published as JRC Digital Economy Working Paper 2018-01

Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Steinle, Christian (2018). Network Structure and Inventive Performance, Academy of Management Proceedings, 2018 (1). DOI

• The goal of this paper is to analyze how different structural configurations of networks stimulate invention activities, i.e., whether they increase the quantity or the quality of patented inventions. We present theoretical arguments implying that the strength of ties is more important for inventive quality, and the size of a network is more important for inventive quantity. We base our analysis on original survey data obtained from 1,204 inventors listed on European patent applications of companies active in clean technology, nanotechnology, and mechanical engineering. The survey data were matched with register information covering 15,168 patent applications filed at the European Patent Office. We find that the size of the network and the strength of the ties are positively related to invention quantity and quality. After instrumenting the endogenous network variables, we find that not considering endogeneity leads to an overestimation of the effect of the network size and an underestimation of the effect of the strength of the network ties. Additionally, after instrumenting the endogenous variables, we find that whereas the size of a network is equally important for invention quantity and quality, the strength of network ties is considerably more important (times 1.6) for quality than for quantity.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Dorner, Matthias (2018). A Novel Technology-Industry Concordance Table Based on Linked Inventor-Establishment Data, Research Policy, 47 (4), 768-781. DOI

• Also published as: Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 17-10

Hoisl, Karin; Harhoff, Dietmar; Dorner, Matthias; Hinz, Tina; Bender, Stefan (2017). Social Ties and Patent Quality Signals – Evidence from East German Inventor Migration, Academy of Management Proceedings, 2016 (1). DOI

• We study the impact of social ties and publicly observable performance signals on the mobility of knowledge workers. In our empirical setting we exploit the fall of the Iron Curtain as a natural experiment for the migration decision of East German inventors. We identify 21,935 East German Inventors via their patenting track records prior to 1990 and social security records in the pan-German labor market. By modeling their mobility decision after 1989, we find that West regions with more pronounced social ties attracted more inventors. However, inventors with better performance indicators prior to 1990 are substantially less dependent on these social ties for their migration decision. We find additional evidence that the same group of inventors manage to enter regional labor markets that fit significantly better to their origin region in East Germany. We conclude that social ties support labor market access while visible labor market signals reduce the dependence on these ties
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Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar; Sorg, Stefan (2017). Patents and Cumulative Innovation – Evidence from Post-Grant Patent Oppositions, Academy of Management Proceedings, 2017 (1). DOI

• Using large-scale data on opposition to patents at the European Patent Office (EPO), we investigate the causal effect of a patent’s invalidation on follow-on inventions. We introduce a new instrumental variable exploiting the participation or absence of the patent examiner in the opposition proceeding. According to our baseline model, patent invalidation leads to a highly significant and sizable increase of forward citations. While this is in line with previous studies, disentangling the effect leads us to results that stand in stark contrast to some of the literature. We find that the effects are most pronounced for patents in discrete technology areas, for areas where patent thickets are absent and for patents which are not protected by ""patent fences"". Moreover, the effect is particularly strong for relatively small patent holders facing comparatively small follow-on innovators.

Böhringer, Christoph; Cuntz, Alexander; Harhoff, Dietmar; Asane-Otoo, Emmanuel (2017). The Impact of the German Feed-in Tariff Scheme on Innovation: Evidence Based on Patent Filings in Renewable Energy Technologies, Energy Economics, 67 (C), 545-553. DOI

• Over the last two decades, feed-in tariffs have pushed the massive expansion of electricity from renewable energy sources in Germany. Between 1991 and 1999, feed-in tariffs were prescribed through the Electricity Feed-in Law – the so-called Stromeinspeisungsgesetz (SEG) – at relatively moderate rates. From 2000 onwards, the SEG was replaced by the Renewable Energy Sources Act – the so-called Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz (EEG) – with much higher subsidy rates. The rise in subsidies to renewable power generation under the EEG came along with a substantial increase in electricity prices provoking an intense public debate on the benefits of renewable energy promotion. In our regression analysis, we assess one popular justification for feed-in tariffs: the demand-side effect of induced innovation. We find that the innovation impact of the German feed-in tariff scheme over the last two decades supports the positive innovation hypothesis. However, the inducement effect of the feed-in tariff scheme under the EEG is not significantly different from that of the SEG. Given the drastic cost of the EEG, we caution against the appraisal of the EEG feed-in tariff scheme solely on the grounds of its impact on technological innovation.

Gambardella, Alfonso; Harhoff, Dietmar; Verspagen, Bart (2017). The Economic Value of Patent Portfolios, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 26 (4), 735-756. DOI

• Patent holders may choose to protect innovations with single patents or to develop portfolios of multiple, related patents. We propose a decision-making model in which patent holders allocate resources to either expanding the number of related patents or investing in higher value of patents in the portfolio. We estimate the derived value equation using portfolio value data from an inventor survey at the level of individual inventions rather than the firm as a whole. We find that investments in individual inventions exhibit diminishing returns, and that a good part of the value of a portfolio depends on adding new patented inventions. Also, while diminishing returns to individual inventions are stable across subsamples, the returns to portfolio size vary between complex and discrete industries, and between inventions that are science-based or driven by customer information. When firms seek to strengthen appropriability, the returns to an increase of portfolio size are not different from the sample average. Thus, a higher number of inventions in a portfolio may reflect both stronger appropriability via patents and genuine creation of value.
• Also published as CEPR Discussion Paper No. 9264

Zwick, Thomas; Frosch, Katharina; Hoisl, Karin; Harhoff, Dietmar (2017). The Power of Individual-Level Drivers of Inventive Performance, Research Policy, 46 (1), 121-137. DOI

• Based on an established theoretical framework of the drivers of inventive performance, the so-called KSAO (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other) factors, this paper seeks to explain empirically the performance of inventors throughout their careers. We combine survey information spanning the inventors’ entire careers and psychometric test evidence, with patent history data for more than 1,000 inventors. We also control for variables that have traditionally been included in estimations of inventive performance such as inventor age and a broad list of applicant institution-, technology-, patent-, and period-related information. We show that educational level, skills acquired during the career, personality traits, career motivations, cognitive abilities, and cognitive problem-solving style are significantly related to inventive performance.
• Also published as ZEW Discussion Paper No. 15080

Cremers, Katrin; Ernicke, Max; Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar; Helmers, Christian; McDonagh, Luke; Schliessler, Paula; van Zeebroeck, Nicolas (2017). Patent Litigation in Europe, European Journal of Law and Economics, 44 (1), 1-44. DOI

• We compare patent litigation cases across four European jurisdictions—Germany, the UK (England and Wales), France, The Netherlands—using case-level data gathered from cases filed in the four jurisdictions during the period 2000–2008. Overall, we find substantial differences across jurisdictions in terms of caseloads—notably, courts in Germany hear by far the largest number of cases, not only in absolute terms, but also when taking macro-economic indicators into account—and we further find important cross-country variances in terms of case outcomes. Moreover, we show empirically that a considerable number of patents are litigated across multiple European jurisdictions; and further, that in the majority of these cases divergent case outcomes are reached across the different jurisdictions, suggesting that the long-suspected problem of inconsistency of decision-making in European patent litigation is in fact real. Finally, we note that the coming into force of the Unified Patent Court in Europe may, in the long term, help to alleviate this inconsistency problem.
• Also published as: ZEW Discussion Paper No. 13-072

Torrisi, Salvatore; Gambardella, Alfonso; Giuri, Paola; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Mariani, Myriam (2016). Used, Blocking and Sleeping Patents: Empirical Evidence from a Large-Scale Inventor Survey, Research Policy, 45 (7), 1374-1385. DOI

• This paper employs data from a large-scale survey (InnoS&T) of inventors in Europe, the USA, and Japan who were listed in patent applications filed at the European Patent Office with priority years between 2003 and 2005. We provide evidence regarding the reasons for patenting and the ways in which patents are being utilized. A substantial share of patents is neither used internally nor for market transactions, which confirms the importance of strategic patenting and inefficiency in the management of intellectual property. We investigate different types of unused patents—unused blocking patents and sleeping patents. We also examine the association between used and unused patents and their characteristics such as family size, scope, generality and overlapping claims, technology area, type of applicant, and the competitive environment from where these patents originate. We discuss our results and derive some implications for innovation and patent policy.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2016). Patent Quality and Examination in Europe, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 106 (5), 193-197. DOI

• This paper reports on effects of recent administrative reforms at the European Patent Office (EPO). In EPO-granted patents, claims numbers started to decline in 2008 when new claims fees became effective, claims sections in patents became shorter, and independent claims longer and presumably more specific. The grant rate remained at relatively low levels, but the EPO was unable to stem the use of divisional filings. The developments at the EPO point to a high private value of delay options. Delay may be achieved either by making use of explicit statutory rules or by other means, such as filing divisional applications.

Harhoff, Dietmar; von Graevenitz, Georg; Wagner, Stefan (2016). Conflict Resolution, Public Goods and Patent Thickets, Management Science, 62 (3), 704-721. DOI

• Postgrant 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 postgrant 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 to 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 postgrant 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.

Cremers, Katrin; Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar; Helmers, Christian; Lefouili, Yassine (2016). Invalid but Infringed? An Analysis of the Bifurcated Patent Litigation System, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 131 (PA), 218-242. DOI

• In bifurcated patent litigation systems, claims of infringement and validity of a patent are decided independently of each other in separate court proceedings at different courts. In non-bifurcated systems, infringement and validity are decided jointly in the same proceedings at a single court. We build a model that shows the key trade-off between bifurcated and non-bifurcated systems and how it affects the incentives of plaintiffs and defendants in patent infringement cases. Using detailed data on patent litigation cases in Germany (bifurcated) and the U.K. (non-bifurcated), we show that bifurcation creates situations in which a patent is held infringed that is subsequently invalidated. We also show that having to challenge a patent's validity in separate court proceedings under bifurcation implies that alleged infringers are less likely to do so. We find this to apply in particular to more resource-constrained alleged infringers. Finally, we find parties to be more likely to settle in a bifurcated system.
• Also published as Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 14-14
• Also published as ZEW - Centre for European Economic Research Discussion Paper No. 14-072

Graham, Stuart J. H.; Harhoff, Dietmar (2014). Separating Patent Wheat from Chaff: Would the U.S. Benefit from Adopting Patent Post-Grant Review?, Research Policy, 43 (9), 1649-1659. DOI

• This paper assesses the impact in the US of adopting a patent post-grant review procedure (opposition). By employing novel methods for matching US patents to their non-US counterparts, we find that the opposition rate is about three times higher among the European Patent Office (EPO) equivalents of a sample of US litigated patents as against control-group (unlitigated) patents. Contingent upon reaching final judgment in EPO opposition, about 70 percent of these equivalent patents are either completely revoked or narrowed. Using these findings to inform a series of welfare estimates, we calculate a range of net social benefits that would accrue to the US from adopting a patent post-grant review. We discover that large social benefits would result primarily from the elimination of unwarranted market power, and less so from litigation cost savings per se. Our results provide evidence that the US could benefit substantially from adopting an administrative patent post-grant review, provided the mechanism is not too costly.
• Available at SSRN

Haeussler, Carolin; Harhoff, Dietmar; Mueller, Elisabeth (2014). How Patenting Informs VC Investors – The Case of Biotechnology, Research Policy, Research Policy, 43 (8), 1286-1298. DOI

• In the presence of asymmetric information, economic agents need to communicate their quality to investors and other parties. This paper investigates how information generated during the patenting process affects the ability of new ventures to attract VC financing. While much of the literature on information asymmetries focuses on patent applications, we argue that the entire examination process should be considered, including information that emerges in the course of patent examination and review. We test several hypotheses using a sample of British and German companies that seek venture capital. We find that the filing of patent applications is positively related to VC financing. Moreover, the examination process at the patent office generates valuable technological and commercial information via search reports, citations and opposition procedures which affect the likelihood of VC financing. Our results suggest that the patenting process supports investors in updating their expectations regarding the quality of new ventures.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Mueller, Elisabeth; Van Reenen, John (2014). What are the Channels for Technology Sourcing? Panel Data Evidence from German Companies, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 23 (1), 204-224. DOI

• Innovation processes within corporations increasingly tap into international technology sources, yet little is known about the relative contribution of different types of innovation channels. We investigate the effectiveness of different types of international technology sourcing activities using survey information on German companies complemented with information from the European Patent Office. German firms with inventors based in the United States disproportionately benefit from R&D knowledge located in the United States. The positive influence on total factor productivity is larger if the research of the inventors results in coapplications of patents with US companies. Moreover, research cooperation with American suppliers also enables German firms to better tap into US R&D, but cooperation with customers and competitors does not appear to aid technology sourcing. The results suggest that the “brain drain” to the United States can have upsides for corporations tapping into American know-how.

Gruber, Marc; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin (2013). Knowledge Recombination Across Technological Boundaries: Scientists vs. Engineers, Management Science, 59 (4), 837-851. DOI

• Building on the seminal work of Thomas J. Allen, we contribute to the emerging microlevel theory of knowledge recombination by examining how individual-level characteristics of inventors affect the breadth of their technological recombinations. Our data set combines information from 30,550 European patents with matched survey data obtained from 1,880 inventors. The analysis supports the view that inventors with a scientific education are more likely to generate patents that span technological boundaries (in our case, 30 broad, top-level technological domains) than inventors with an engineering degree. A doctoral degree is associated with increased recombination breadth for all groups of inventors. The breadth of an inventor's technological recombinations diminishes with increasing temporal distance to his education, but the differences between scientists and engineers persist over time. Our findings provide several new insights for research on inventors, the literature on organizational learning and innovation, and strategy research.

Von Graevenitz, Georg; Wagner, Stefan; Harhoff, Dietmar (2013). Incidence and Growth of Patent Thickets: The Impact of Technological Opportunities and Complexity, Journal of Industrial Economics, 61 (3), 521-563. DOI

Hall, Bronwyn H.; Harhoff, Dietmar (2012). Recent Research on the Economics of Patents, Annual Review of Economics, 4 (1), 541-565. DOI

• This review surveys recent research on the economics of patents. 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.

Von Graevenitz, Georg; Wagner, Stefan; Harhoff, Dietmar (2011). How to Measure Patent Thickets: A Novel Approach, Economics Letters, 111 (1), 6-9. DOI

• This paper provides a direct measure of the density of patent thickets based on patent citations. We discuss the algorithm that generates the measure and present descriptive results validating it. Moreover, we identify technology areas particularly affected by patent thickets.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Mayrhofer, Philip (2010). Managing User Communities and Hybrid Innovation Processes: Concepts and Design Implications, Organizational Dynamics, 39 (2), 137-144. DOI

Von Graevenitz, Georg; Harhoff, Dietmar; Weber, Richard (2010). The Effects of Entrepreneurship Education, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 76 (1), 90-112. DOI

• Entrepreneurship education ranks high on policy agendas in Europe and the US, but little research is available to assess its impact. To help close this gap we investigate whether entrepreneurship education affects intentions to be entrepreneurial uniformly or whether it leads to greater sorting of students. The latter can reduce the average intention to be entrepreneurial and yet be socially beneficial. This paper provides a model of learning in which entrepreneurship education generates signals to students. Drawing on the signals, students evaluate their aptitude for entrepreneurial tasks. The model is tested using data from a compulsory entrepreneurship course. Using ex-ante and ex-post-survey responses from students, we find that intentions to found decline somewhat although the course has significant positive effects on students’ self-assessed entrepreneurial skills. The empirical analysis supports the hypothesis that students receive informative signals and learn about their entrepreneurial aptitude. We outline implications for educators and public policy.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Reichl, Bettina; Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, Bruno van (2009). Patent Validation at the Country Level—The Role of Fees and Translation Costs, Research Policy, 38 (9), 1423-1437. DOI

Harhoff, Dietmar (2009). The Role of Patents and Licenses in Securing External Finance for Innovation, EIB Papers - R&D and the Financing of Innovation in Europe Financing Innovative Firms, 14 (2), 74-97.

• Chinese Translation by Wenting Cheng published 2017 in Tsinghua Intellectual Property Review (Vol 2), Law Press China: 29-62
• http://www.eib.org/attachments/efs/eibpapers/eibpapers_2009_v14_n02_en.pdf

Harhoff, Dietmar; Wagner, Stefan (2009). The Duration of Patent Examination at the European Patent Office, Management Science, 55 (12), 1969-1984. DOI

• We analyze the duration and outcomes of patent examination at the European Patent Office utilizing an unusually rich data set covering a random sample of 215,265 applications filed between 1982 and 1998. In our empirical analysis, we distinguish between three groups of determinants: applicant characteristics, indicators of patent quality and value, and determinants that affect the complexity of the examination task. The results from an accelerated failure time model indicate that more controversial claims lead to slower grants but faster withdrawals, whereas well-documented applications are approved faster and withdrawn more slowly. We find strong evidence that applicants accelerate grant proceedings for their most valuable patents, but that they also prolong the battle for such patents if a withdrawal or refusal is imminent. This paper develops implications of these results for managerial decision making in research and development and innovation management.

Franke, Nikolaus; Gruber, Marc; Harhoff, Dietmar; Henkel, Joachim (2008). Venture Capitalists' Evaluations of Start-Up Teams: Trade-Offs, Knock-Out Criteria, and the Impact of VC Experience, Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, 32 (3), 459-483. DOI

• The start-up team plays a key role in venture capitalists' evaluations of venture proposals. Our findings go beyond existing research, first by providing a detailed exploration of VCs' team evaluation criteria, and second by investigating the moderator variable of VC experience. Our results reveal utility trade-offs between team characteristics and thus provide answers to questions such as “What strength does it take to compensate for a weakness in characteristic A?” Moreover, our analysis reveals that novice VCs tend to focus on the qualifications of individual team members, while experienced VCs focus more on team cohesion. Data were obtained in a conjoint experiment with 51 professionals in VC firms and analyzed using discrete choice econometric models.

Gambardella, Alfonso; Harhoff, Dietmar; Verspagen, Bart (2008). The Value of European Patents, European Management Review, 5 (2), 69-84. DOI

• This paper employs data from an extensive European survey to produce one of the first systematic assessments of the private economic value of patents. The estimated mean of our patent value distribution is higher than 3 million euros, the median is about one-tenth of it, and the mode is around a few thousand euros. This is in line with previous findings about the skewed distribution of patent values. Our measure is significantly correlated with the number of patent citations, references, claims, and countries in which the patent is applied. Citations explain value as much as the other three indicators combined, and the right tail of citations is correlated with the right tail of our value measure. Yet, the four indicators only explain 2.7% of the variance of patent value. Thus, while the use of these indicators as proxies for value, particularly citations, may be justified, predictions based on these indicators carry significant noise. After using country, technology, and patent class fixed effects, we only explain 11.3% of the variation in patent value. The ‘measure of our ignorance’ about the determinants of patent value is then still sizable, which calls for additional research to fill the gap.
  
  
  

Giuri, Paola; Mariani, Myriam; Brusoni, Stefano; Crespi, Gustavo; Francoz, Dominique; Gambardella, Alfonso; Garcia-Fontes, Walter; Geuna, Aldo; Gonzales, Raul; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Le Bas, Christian; Luzzi, Alessandra; Magazzini, Laura; Nesta, Lionel; Nomaler, Önder; Palomeras, Neus; Patel, Pari; Romanelli, Marzia; Verspagen, Bart (2007). Inventors and Invention Processes in Europe: Results from the PatVal-EU Survey, Research Policy, 36 (8), 1107-1127. DOI

• Based on a survey of the inventors of 9017 European patented inventions, this paper provides new information about the characteristics of European inventors, the sources of their knowledge, the importance of formal and informal collaborations, the motivations to invent, and the actual use and economic value of the patents.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin (2007). Institutionalized Incentives for Ingenuity—Patent Value and the German Employees’ Inventions Act, Research Policy, 36 (8), 1143-1162. DOI

• Germany is one of few countries in which the monetary compensation for inventors is not only determined by negotiations between employer and employee-inventor, but also by relatively precise legal provisions. In this paper, we describe the characteristics of the German Employees’ Inventions Act (GEIA) and discuss which incentives it creates. We rely on responses from a recent survey of 3350 German inventors to test hypotheses regarding this institution. We conclude from our data that the law creates substantial monetary rewards for productive inventors. The qualitative responses from our survey confirm this view, but also point to a number of dysfunctional effects.

Franke, Nikolaus; Gruber, Marc; Harhoff, Dietmar; Henkel, Joachim (2006). What You Are Is What You Like - Similarity Biases in Venture Capitalists' Evaluations of Start-up Teams, Journal of Business Venturing, 21 (6), 802-826. DOI

• This paper extends recent research studying biases in venture capitalist's decision making. We contribute to this literature by analyzing biases arising from similarities between a venture capitalist and members of a venture team. We summarize the psychological foundations of such similarity effects and derive a set of hypotheses regarding the impact of similarity on the assessment of team quality. Using data from a conjoint experiment with 51 respondents, we find that venture capitalists tend to favor teams that are similar to themselves in type of training and professional experience. Our results have important implications for academics and practitioners alike.

Bond, Stephen; Harhoff, Dietmar; Van Reenen, John (2005). Investment, R&D and Financial Constraints in Britain and Germany, Annales d'Economie et de Statistique, 79/80, 435-462.

• This paper tests for the importance of cash flow on investment in fixed capital and R&D using firm-level panel data in two countries between 1985 and 1994. For German firms, cash flow is not informative in simple econometric models of fixed investment or R&D. In identical specifications for British firms, cash flow is informative about investment, although not about the level of R&D spending conditional on the R&D participation decision. In the UK, we also find that investment is less sensitive to cash flow for R&D-performing firms, and that cash flow predicts whether firms perform R&D or not. We confirm that these differences do not simply reflect a greater role for current cash flow in forecasting future sales. These results suggest that financial constraints are more significant in Britain, that they affect the decision to engage in R&D rather than the level of R&D spending by participants, and that consequently the British firms that do engage in R&D are a self-selected group where financing constraints tend to be less binding.
• Ce papier étudie l'effet du cash-flow sur l'investissement en capital fixe et en R&D à partir de données individuelles d'entreprises couvrant deux pays entre 1985 et 1994. Pour les firmes allemandes, le cash-flow n'apparaît pas significatif dans des modèles économétriques simples d'investissement en capital fixe ou en R&D. A partir de spécifications identiques, les estimations pour les firmes du Royaume-Uni montrent un effet significatif du cash-flow sur l'investissement mais pas sur le niveau des dépenses de R&D conditionnellement à la décision d'entreprendre de la R&D. Au Royaume-Uni, nous trouvons également que l'investissement est moins sensible au cash-flow pour les firmes faisant de la R&D et que le cash-flow influence la décision de faire ou non de la R&D. Nous confirmons que ces différences ne reflètent pas simplement un effet plus important du cash-flow courant comme prédicteur des ventes futures. Ces résultats suggèrent que les contraintes financières sont plus significatives au Royaume-Uni, qu'elles affectent la décision d'entreprendre de la R&D plutôt que le niveau des dépenses de R&D des participants, et que par conséquent, les firmes qui entreprennent de la R&D sont un groupe « auto sélectionné » pour lequel les contraintes financières tendent à être moins importantes.
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/20777584

Harhoff, Dietmar; Reitzig, Markus (2004). Determinants of Opposition against EPO Patent Grants – The Case of Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals, International Journal of Industrial Organization, 22 (4), 443-480. DOI

• We analyze the determinants of opposition to biotechnology and pharmaceutical patents granted by the European Patent Office (EPO) between 1978 and 1996. Opposition at the EPO is the most important mechanism by which the validity of a European patent can be challenged. In our sample, 8.6% of the patents are attacked in opposition proceedings. We show empirically that the likelihood of opposition increases with patent value, and that opposition is particularly frequent in areas with strong patenting activity and with high technical or market uncertainty. We comment on the implications of these results for the design of the patent and litigation system.

Hall, Bronwyn H.; Harhoff, Dietmar (2004). Post Grant Review Systems at the U.S. Patent Office – Design Parameters and Expected Impact, Berkeley Law Technology Journal, 19 (3), 989-1016.

• Several policy review boards have advocated the introduction of post-grant patent review mechanisms in the U.S patent system. We discuss to what extent “patent quality” has been deteriorating in the U.S. patent system and then consider the expected impact of post-grant review mechanisms as advocated by the policy review boards. We take a detailed look at the experience with the opposition mechanism at the European Patent Office. Our results indicate that a properly designed U.S. post-grant review could generate high welfare gains. We also discuss the design choices faced by policymakers in the United States and provide recommendations.
• http://btlj.org/data/articles2015/vol19/19_3_S/19-berkeley-tech-l-j-0989-1016.pdf

Harhoff, Dietmar; Scherer, Frederic M.; Vopel, Katrin (2003). Citations, Family Size, Opposition and the Value of Patent Rights, Research Policy, 32 (8), 1343-1363. DOI

• We combine estimates of the value of patent rights from a survey of patent-holders with a set of indicator variables in order to model the value of patents. Our results suggest that the number of references to the patent literature as well as the citations a patent receives are positively related to its value. References to the non-patent literature are informative about the value of pharmaceutical and chemical patents, but not in other technical fields. Patents which are upheld in opposition and annulment procedures and patents representing large international patent families are particularly valuable.
• Publisher's Erratum

Harhoff, Dietmar; Henkel, Joachim; Hippel, Eric von (2003). Profiting From Voluntary Information Spillovers: How Users Benefit by Freely Revealing Their Innovations, Research Policy, 32 (10), 1753-1769. DOI

• Empirical studies of innovation have found that end users frequently develop important product and process innovations. Defying conventional wisdom on the negative effects of uncompensated spillovers, innovative users also often openly reveal their innovations to competing users and to manufacturers. Rival users are thus in a position to reproduce the innovation in-house and benefit from using it, and manufacturers are in a position to refine the innovation and sell it to all users, including competitors of the user revealing its innovation. In this paper, we explore the incentives that users might have to freely reveal their proprietary innovations. We then develop a game-theoretic model to explore the effect of these incentives on users’ decisions to reveal or hide their proprietary information. We find that, under realistic parameter constellations, free revealing pays. We conclude by discussing some implications of our findings.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Fier, Andreas (2002). Die Evolution der bundesdeutschen Forschungs– und Technologiepolitik: Rückblick und Bestandsaufnahme, Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, 3 (3), 279-301. DOI

• In national innovation systems, universities are not only essential elements of the research infrastructure, but also main players in the field of education and further education. Their specific role in the interplay between knowledge production and market implementation of knowledge via start–ups derives from this fact. This article takes as its theme the university environment which supports and stimulates the start–up processes. It also shows the progress achieved in the German university landscape in recent years on the path towards a culture of entrepreneurship in teaching and research. This is manifested, for example, in the number of start–up chairs, the development of networks to exploit the start–up potential of universities together with regional partners, and in the numbers of spin–offs established.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Reitzig, Markus (2001). Strategien zur Gewinnmaximierung bei der Anmeldung von Patenten: wirtschaftliche und rechtliche Aspekte als Entscheidungsgrößen beim Schutz von Erfindungen, Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft, 71 (5), 509-529.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Régibeau, Pierre; Rocket, Katherine E. (2001). Some Simple Economics of Genetically Modified Food, Economic Policy, 16 (33), 263-299.

• http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344643

Scherer, F. M.; Harhoff, Dietmar (2000). Technology Policy for a World of Skew-distributed Outcomes, Research Policy, 29 (4-5), 559-566. DOI

• This paper draws implications for technology policy from evidence on the size distribution of returns from eight sets of data on inventions and innovations attributable to private sector firms and universities. The distributions are all highly skew; the top 10% of sample members captured from 48 to 93 percent of total sample returns. It follows that programs seeking to advance technology should not be judged negatively if they lead to numerous economic failures; rather, emphasis should be placed on the relatively few big successes. To achieve noteworthy success with appreciable confidence, a sizeable array of projects must often be supported. The outcome distributions are sufficiently skewed that, even with large numbers of projects, it is not possible to diversify away substantial residual variability through portfolio strategies.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2000). R&D Spillovers, Technological Proximity, and Productivity Growth - Evidence from German Panel Data, Schmalenbach Business Review, 52 (3), 238-260. DOI

• This paper studies the effect of R&D spillovers on R&D spending and productivity in a sample of German manufacturing firms. Using panel estimation techniques, the results suggest that spillovers affect industries in a heterogeneous manner. In terms of R&D investment, firms in high-technology sectors appear to react positively and more strongly to spillovers than firms in other industries. Experiments with alternative spillover definitions suggest that the effect is not due to racing phenomena. Moreover, in high-technology industries spillovers have a productivity-enhancing effect in addition to encouraging R&D investment. The effect is conditioned by the firm’s own R&D activity. Consistent with the hypothesis of absorptive capacity, high R&D capital stocks appear to enable firms to profit from external R&D.

Scherer, F. M.; Harhoff, Dietmar; Kukies, Jörg (2000). Uncertainty and the Size Distribution of Rewards from Innovation, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 10 (1-2), 175-200. DOI

• Previous research has shown that the distribution of profit outcomes from technological innovations is highly skew. This paper builds upon those detailed findings to ask: what stochastic processes can plausibly be inferred to have generated the observed distributions? After reviewing the evidence, this paper reports on several stochastic model simulations, including a pure Gibrat random walk with monthly changes approximating those observed for high-technology startup company stocks and a more richly specified model blending internal and external market uncertainties. The most highly specified simulations suggest that the set of profit potentials tapped by innovators is itself skew-distributed and that the number of entrants into innovation races is more likely to be independent of market size than stochastically dependent upon it.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Narin, Francis; Scherer, F. M.; Vopel, Katrin (1999). Citation Frequency and the Value of Patented Innovation, Review of Economics and Statistics, 81 (3), 511-515.

• Through a survey, private economic value estimates were obtained on 964 inventions made in the United States and Germany and on which German patent renewal fees were paid to full-term expiration in 1995. A search of subsequent U.S. and German patents yielded counts of citations to those patents. Patents renewed to full-term were significantly more highly cited than patents allowed to expire before their full term. The higher an invention's economic value estimate was, the more the patent was subsequently cited.
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/2646773

Harhoff, Dietmar (1999). Firm Formation and Regional Spillovers - Evidence from Germany, Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 8 (1-2), 27-55. DOI

• This paper studies the effect of regional spillovers on the rate of firm formation in two major West German industries for the time period from 1989 to 1993. 1 exploit regional variations in firm formation at the county level to identify the effects of historically given industry structure and employment structure on thc emergence of new firms. The results point to the existence of strong localization and urbanization effects. The emergence of high technology firms seems to be contingent on a heterogeneous historical industry structure, the existence of service providers, and in particular on a high employment share of scientists in universities and extra-university research laboratories.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Stahl, Konrad; Woywode, Michael (1998). Legal Form, Growth and Exit of West German Firms - Empirical Results for Manufacturing, Construction, Trade and Service Industries, Journal of Industrial Economics, 46 (4), 453-488.

• Using a sample of approximately 11000 West German firms from all major sectors of the economy, we test predictions on the relationship between legal form, firm survival and employment growth. In our tests, we distinguish between voluntary liquidation without losses to creditors and bankruptcy, that is forced liquidation. We demonstrate that in all sectors firms under limited liability have higher growth and higher insolvency rates than comparable firms under full liability. Firms whose owners are approaching retirement age are characterised by relatively high hazards of voluntary liquidation, while the propensity to declare insolvency is not affected by the owner's age.
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/117499

Harhoff, Dietmar; Körting, Timm (1998). Lending Relationships in Germany – Empirical Evidence from Survey Data, Journal of Banking and Finance, 22 (10-11), 1317-1353. DOI

• We examine empirically the role of lending relationships in determining the costs and collateral requirements for external funds. The data originate from a recently concluded survey of small and medium-sized German firms. In our descriptive analysis, we explore the borrowing patterns and the concentration of borrowing from financial institutions. Using data on L/C interest rates, collateral requirements, and the firm's use of fast payment discounts we find that relationship variables may have some bearing on the price of external funds, but much more so on loan collateralization and availability. Firms in financial distress face comparatively high L/C interest rates and reduced credit availability.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1998). R&D and Productivity in German Manufacturing Firms, Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 6 (1), 29-49.

• This paper uses a new firm panel data set to explore the relationship between R&D and productivity in German manufacturing firms for the period from 1979 to 1989. The results confirm the view that K&D is an important determinant of productivity growth. In the cross-section, the elasticity of sales with respect to R&D capital is on the order of 14 per cent. Using fixed-effects estimators yields R&D elasticities of about 8 per cent. Assuming different depreciation rates for R&D capital has virtually no effect on these results. Differencing estimates improve considerably when growth rates are computed over longer time periods, suggesting that the divergence between time-series and cross-sectional estimates is driven by random measurement errors. The paper also considers differences between high technology and other firms. Cross-section and panel elasticity estimates of the R&D effect diverge considerably for the two groups, while the corresponding rate of return estimators display far less variation. There is some evidence that the R&D elasticity increased during the early 1980s, and that it fell sharply back to its 1979 value during the period from 1985 to 1989.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1998). Are There Financing Constraints for R&D and Investment in German Manufacturing Firms?, Annales d'Économie et de Statistique, 49/50, 421-456.

• Using a newly constructed panel dataset of German enterprises, I estimate R&D and capital investment equations for the time period from 1990 to 1994. Simple accelerator specifications indicate considerable sensitivity of R&D and investment to cash flow for relatively small firms. Much of this effect vanishes once error-correcting behavior is taken into account, but a significant positive relationship between cash flow and investment remains for relatively small firms. In the case of R&D, weak but significant cash flow effects persist both for small and large firms. The evidence from Euler equationi estimates is not conclusive. The investment Euler equation for large firms appears to perform relatively well and yields results close to those expected under the null hypothesis of no financing constraints. The estimates from the Euler equation for R&D are not informative. Additional evidence from survey data suggests that the cash flow sensitivity of investment in small firms is likely to reflect financing constraints. /// À partir d'un panel d'entreprises allemandes nouvellement construit, j'ai estimé des équations d'investissement en R&D et en capital pour la péroide 1990 à 1994. Les spécifications de type "accélérateur" suggèrent une grande sensibilité de l'investissement en R&D par rapport au cash flow pour les petites entreprises. Une partie de ces effets disparaissent lorsqu'une spécification "à erreurs corrigées" est retenue, mais une relation significativement positive entre cash flow et investissement persiste pour les petites entreprises. Pour la R&D, I'impact du cash-flow est faible mais significatif pour les petites et les grandes entreprises. Les résultats obtenus à partir des équations d'Euler sont plus ambigus. Pour les grandes entreprises, les résultats obtenus indiquent une absence de contraintes financières. Les estimations de I'équation d'Euler pour la R&D ne sont toutefois pas très informatives. L'utilisation additionnelle de données d'enquête indique que I'investissement des petites entreprises est sujet à des contraintes financières.
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/20076124

Harhoff, Dietmar; Moch, Dietmar (1997). Price Indexes for PC Database Software and the Value of Code Compatibility, Research Policy, 26 (4-5), 509-520. DOI

• Changing product quality poses a challenge for the computation of price indexes, in particular in technologically advanced industries. We assess the differences between traditional and quality-corrected indexes by computing hedonic and matched-model price indexes for personal computer database software. Our database covers the price development in Germany from 1986 to 1994. Quality-adjusted software prices declined by 7.4% according to our hedonic index. Surprisingly, a matched-model index based on linking the prices of directly comparable program versions decreases even faster than the hedonic index (9.3%). This unusual result is apparently caused by the simultaneous selling of old and new versions of a given software product. The estimation results also confirm the importance of network effects. Code compatibility, i.e., the capability of executing programs written for the dominant database product, yields a significant price premium. The ability to read and write data in the dominant spreadsheet format (file compatibility) is also associated with higher prices, but the price differential is much smaller than in the case of code compatibility.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1997). Innovationsanreize in einem strukturellen Oligopolmodell, Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, 117 (3), 323-364.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Kane, Thomas J. (1997). Is the German Apprenticeship System a Panacea for the U.S. Labor Market, Journal of Population Economics, 10 (2), 171-196.

• This paper explores the structure of incentives undergirding the German system of apprenticeship training. We first describe characteristics of the German labor market which may lead firms to accept part of the cost of general training, even in the face of worker turnover. We then compare labor market outcomes for apprentices in Germany and high school graduates in the United States. Apprentices in Germany occupy a similar position within the German wage structure as held by high school graduates in the United States labor market. Finally, we provide evidence that -- in both countries -- the problem of forming labor market bonds is particularly acute for minority youth.
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/20007537

Harhoff, Dietmar (1996). Strategic Spillovers and Incentives for Research and Development, Management Science, 42 (6), 907-925.

• This paper develops a model in which a monopolist supplier can contribute to downstream product improvements by creating knowledge spillovers which downstream firms use as a substitute for their own R&D efforts. Although a market for R&D information does not exist, the supplier may appropriate an indirect return on R&D for two reasons. Sufficiently high levels of spillover information lead to greater downstream product quality, and spillover information reduces the equilibrium sunk cost of R&D for downstream firms and thus facilitates entry. Both effects cause an expansion of downstream output and enhance the demand for the supplier's intermediate good. Given sufficiently strong incentives for supplier R&D, the locus of R&D shifts partially from the downstream to the upstream industry. R&D expenditures, technological opportunities, and downstream industry structure are determined endogenously. Weak appropriability conditions in the downstream industry enhance innovation incentives in the supply sector.
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/2634603

Herausgeberwerke

Harhoff, Dietmar; Lakhani, Karim R. (Hg.) (2016). Revolutionizing Innovation: Users, Communities, and Open Innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Schwaiger, Manfred; Harhoff, Dietmar (Hg.) (2003). Empirie und Betriebswirtschaft - Entwicklungen und Perspektiven. Herausgeberband mit Beiträgen der Jahrestagung des Verbandes der Hochschullehrer für Betriebswirtschaft. München: Schäffer-Pöschel.

Harhoff, Dietmar (Hg.) (1997). Unternehmensgründungen - Empirische Analysen für die alten und neuen Bundesländer (ZEW-Wirtschaftsanalysen, 7). Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Harhoff, Dietmar (Hg.) (1995). Preismessung und Technischer Fortschritt (ZEW-Wirtschaftsanalysen - Schriftenreihe des ZEW, 3). Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Konferenzbeiträge

Erhardt, Sebastian; Ghosh, Mainak; Buunk, Erik; Rose, Michael; Harhoff, Dietmar (2024). Logic Mill - A Knowledge Navigation System, CEUR Workshop Proceedings 3775, 25-35.

• Logic Mill is a scalable and openly accessible software system that identifies semantically similar documents within either one domain-specific corpus or multi-domain corpora. It uses advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to generate numerical representations of documents. It leverages a large pre-trained language model to generate these document representations. The system focuses on scientific publications and patent documents and contains more than 200 million
  documents. It is easily accessible via a simple Application Programming Interface (API) or via a web interface. Moreover, it is continuously being updated and can be extended to text corpora from other domains. We see this system as a general-purpose tool for future research applications in the social sciences and other domains.
• https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3775/paper7.pdf
• Also published as: arXiv preprint 2301.00200
• Event: 5th Workshop on Patent Text Mining and Semantic Technologies (PatentSemTech 2024) co-located with the 47th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR 2024), Washington D.C., 2024-10-24

Beiträge in Sammelwerken

Harhoff, Dietmar (2024). Markets for Technology and Licensing – Empirical Evidence and Policy Options, in: Hanns Ullrich, Peter Drahos, Gustavo Ghidini (Hg.), Kritika: Essays on Intellectual Property Volume 6, Edward Elgar Publishing: Northampton, MA, USA; Cheltenham, UK 2024, forthcoming.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Suyer, Alexander (2018). In Transit: From Classic Research to Modern Innovation Policy, in: Stefan Mair, Dirk Messner, Lutz Meyer (Hg.), Germany and the World 2030: What will change. How we must act, Berlin: Econ Verlag.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Suyer, Alexander (2018). Von klassischer Forschungs- zu moderner Innovationspolitik, in: Stefan Mair, Dirk Messner, Lutz Meyer (Hg.), Deutschland und die Welt 2030: Was sich verändert und wie wir handeln müssen, 263-270. Berlin: Econ Verlag.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Stuerz, Roland; Suyer, Alexander (2018). Impulse für Sprunginnovationen in Deutschland, in: Dietmar Harhoff, Henning Kagermann, Martin Stratmann (Hg.), (2018). Impulse für Sprunginnovationen in Deutschland (acatech Diskussion), München: Herbert Utz Verlag.

• https://www.acatech.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/acatech_DISKUSSION_Sprunginnovation_Web_01.pdf

Harhoff, Dietmar; Schnitzer, Monika (2018). Science, Research, and Innovation in Germany: 2000 to 2017, in: Dalia Marin (Hg.), Explaining Germany's Exceptional Recovery, 55-65. London: CEPR Press.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2016). Context, Capabilities, and Incentives – The Core and the Periphery of User Innovation, in: Dietmar Harhoff, Karim R. Lakhani (Hg.), Revolutionizing Innovation: Users, Communities, and Open Innovation, 27-44. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Lakhani, Karim R. (2016). Revolutionizing Innovation: Fundamentals and New Perspectives, in: Dietmar Harhoff, Karim R. Lakhani (Hg.), Revolutionizing Innovation: Users, Communities, and Open Innovation, 1-24. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Van der Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, Bruno; Vandeput, Charlotte (2016). Languages, Fees and the International Scope of Patenting, in: Victor Ginsburgh, Shlomo Weber (Hg.), The Palgrave Handbook of Economics and Language, 403-422. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI

• Recent developments in patenting activity are the subject of a growing literature. Existing research contributes to a better understanding of the incentives that drive economic agents to rely on the patent system (e.g. Cohen et al., 2000; Arundel, 2001; Blind et al., 2006; Peeters and van Pottelsberghe, 2006; von Graevenitz et al., 2013) and on potential implications of their behaviour for the effectiveness of the patent system. Lately, a number of researchers have started to explore the design of the patent system itself, i.e. the role of fees and costs of patenting (Archontopoulos et al., 2007; Harhoff et al., 2009; de Rassenfosse and van Pottelsberghe, 2013), the duration of examination (Thomas, 2010; Harhoff, 2011), as well as patent office governance and management (Friebel et al., 2006).
• Also published as: Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 15-04

Harhoff, Dietmar (2011). The Role of Patents and Licenses in Securing External Finance for Innovation, in: David B. Audretsch, Oliver Falck, Stephan Helbich (Hg.), Handbook of Research on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 55-73. Cheltenham: Elgar.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2011). Strategisches Patentmanagement, in: Sönke Albers, Oliver Gassmann (Hg.), Handbuch Technologie- und Innovationsmanagement - Strategie, Umsetzung, Controlling, 2. ed. Aufl., 159-176. Wiesbaden: Gabler.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2010). Erfindungen und Innovationen in der globalen Wirtschaft - Zur Entwicklung des Patentsystems, in: S. Leible, A. Ohly, H. Zech (Hg.), Wissen - Märkte - Geistiges Eigentum (Geistiges Eigentum und Wettbewerbsrecht, 38), 37-50. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Schulz, C.; Hoisl, Karin (2007). Intellectual Property, in: Hagen Hof, U. Wengenroth (Hg.), Innovationsforschung - Ansätze, Methoden, Grenzen und Perspektiven (Innovationsforschung, 1), 161-170. Hamburg: LIT Verlag.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2006). Patent Quantity and Quality in Europe – Trends and Policy Implications, in: Brain Kahin, Dominique Foray (Hg.), Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy, 331-350. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Sandner, Philipp (2006). Die Ergebnisse von FuE-Erhebungen als Inputfaktor für Entscheidungsprozesse - Eine explorative Studie, in: Harald Legler, Christoph Grenzmann (Hg.), FuE-Aktivitäten der deutschen Wirtschaft: Analysen auf der Basis von FuE-Erhebungen (Materialien zur Wissenschaftsstatistik, 15), 19-24. Essen: NIW u.a.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2005). The Battle for Patent Rights, in: Carine Peeters, Bruno van Pottelsberghe (Hg.), Economic and Management Perspectives on Intellectual Property Rights (Applied Econometrics Association Series), 21-39. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2005). Strategisches Patentmanagement, in: Sönke Albers, Oliver Gassmann (Hg.), Handbuch Technologie- und Innovationsmanagement - Strategie, Umsetzung, Controlling, 175-192. Wiesbaden: Gabler.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2005). Innovationen und Wettbewerbspolitik – Ansätze zur ökonomischen Analyse des Patentsystems, in: Monopolkommission (Hg.), Zukunftsperspektiven der Wettbewerbspolitik, 73-87. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Hall, Bronwyn H.; Graham, Stuart; Harhoff, Dietmar; Mowery, David C. (2004). Prospects for Improving U.S. Patent Quality via Postgrant Opposition, in: Adam B. Jaffe, Josh Lerner, Scott Stern (Hg.), Innovation Policy and the Economy, 115-143, Bd. 4 2004.

• Also available as NBER Working Paper No. 9731, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge MA
• The recent surge in U.S. patenting and the expansion of patentable subject matter has increased patent office backlogs and raised concerns that, in some cases, patents of insufficient quality or with inadequate search of prior art are being issued. At the same time, patent litigation and its costs are rising. This paper explores the potential of a postgrant review process modeled on the European opposition system to improve patent quality, reveal overlooked prior art, and reduce subsequent litigation. We argue that the welfare gains to such a system may be substantial.
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/25056163

Harhoff, Dietmar; Scherer, Frederic M.; Vopel, Katrin (2003). Exploring the Tail of the Patent Value Distribution, in: Ove Granstrand (Hg.), Economics, Law and Intellectual Property: Seeking Strategies for Research and Teaching in a Developing Field, 279-309. Boston/Dordrecht/London: Kluwer.

Graham, Stuart J. H.; Hall, Bronwyn H.; Harhoff, Dietmar; Mowery, David C. (2003). Post-Issue Patent Quality Control: A Comparative Study of US Patent Re-Examinations and European Patent Oppositions, in: Wesley M. Cohen, S. A. Merrill (Hg.), Patents in the Knowledge-Based Economy, 74-119. Washington, D. C.: The National Academic Press.

Gruber, Marc; Harhoff, Dietmar; Tausend, Christian (2003). Finanzielle Entwicklung junger Wachstumsunternehmen, in: Ann-Kristin Achleitner, Alexander Bassen (Hg.), Controlling für junge Unternehmen (Finanzbetrieb), 27-50. Stuttgart: Schaeffer-Poeschel.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Gruber, Marc (2002). Generierung und nachhaltige Sicherung komparativer Wettbewerbsvorteile, in: Ulrich Hommel, Thomas C. Knecht (Hg.), Wertorientiertes Start-up-Management, 320-334. München: Vahlen.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Ramb, Fred (2001). Investment and Taxation in Germany - Evidence from Firm-Level Panel Data, in: Deutsche Bundesbank (Hg.), Investing Today for the World of Tomorrow, 47-73. Heidelberg: Springer.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2000). Are There Financing Constraints for R&D and Investment in German Manufacturing Firms?, in: David Encaoua et al. (Hg.), The Economics and Econometrics of Innovation, 399-434. Boston/Dordrecht/London: Kluwer.

• Using a newly constructed panel dataset of German enterprises, I estimate R&D and capital investment equations for the time period from 1990 to 1994. Simple accelerator specifications indicate considerable sensitivity of R&D and investment to cash flow for relatively small firms. Much of this effect vanishes once error-correcting behavior is taken into account, but a significant positive relationship between cash flow and investment remains for relatively small firms. In the case of R&D, weak but significant cash flow effects persist both for small and large firms. The evidence from Euler equationi estimates is not conclusive. The investment Euler equation for large firms appears to perform relatively well and yields results close to those expected under the null hypothesis of no financing constraints. The estimates from the Euler equation for R&D are not informative. Additional evidence from survey data suggests that the cash flow sensitivity of investment in small firms is likely to reflect financing constraints. /// À partir d'un panel d'entreprises allemandes nouvellement construit, j'ai estimé des équations d'investissement en R&D et en capital pour la péroide 1990 à 1994. Les spécifications de type "accélérateur" suggèrent une grande sensibilité de l'investissement en R&D par rapport au cash flow pour les petites entreprises. Une partie de ces effets disparaissent lorsqu'une spécification "à erreurs corrigées" est retenue, mais une relation significativement positive entre cash flow et investissement persiste pour les petites entreprises. Pour la R&D, I'impact du cash-flow est faible mais significatif pour les petites et les grandes entreprises. Les résultats obtenus à partir des équations d'Euler sont plus ambigus. Pour les grandes entreprises, les résultats obtenus indiquent une absence de contraintes financières. Les estimations de I'équation d'Euler pour la R&D ne sont toutefois pas très informatives. L'utilisation additionnelle de données d'enquête indique que I'investissement des petites entreprises est sujet à des contraintes financières.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1999). Comment on James R. Markusen, Global Investment Liberalization: Effects on Labor and the Location/Agglomeration of High-Tech Activities and Production, in: Horst Siebert (Hg.), Globalization and Labor, 108-115. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1999). Comment on Alexander Gerybadze, Multinationale Unternehmen und nationale Innovationssysteme – Konflikt oder Komplementarität, in: Otto G. Mayer, Hans-Eckart Scharrer (Hg.), Internationale Unternehmensstrategien und nationale Standortpolitik (Veröffentlichungen des HWWA-Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung, Hamburg, 53), 123-128. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1999). Comment on Johann Szenzenstein, Die Behandlung von Qualitätsänderungen im Preisindex für die Lebenshaltung, in: Volkswirtschaftliche Forschungsgruppe der Deutschen Bundesbank (Hg.), Zur Diskussion über den Verbraucherpreisindex als Inflationsindikator (Diskussionspapier, 3/99), 65-82. Frankfurt am Main: Deutsche Bundesbank.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1999). Vertical Organization, Technology Flows and R&D Incentives, in: Dennis C. Mueller, A. Haid, J. Weigand (Hg.), Competition, Efficiency, and Welfare. Essays in Honor of Manfred Neumann, 57-82. Boston/Dordrecht/London: Kluwer.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1999). Innovation Objectives, Managerial Education and Firm Performance, in: Klaus Brockhoff, Alok K. Chakrabarti, Jürgen Hauschildt (Hg.), The Dynamics of Innovation, 133-160. Berlin: Springer.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Röller, L.-H. (1999). Entwicklung und Perspektiven der bundesrepublikanischen Beihilfepolitik, in: Max Kaase, Schmid (Hg.), Eine lernende Demokratie - 50 Jahre Bundesrepublik Deutschland, WZB-Jahrbuch 1999, 461-498. Berlin: Edition Sigma.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1998). Trends in Long-Term Employment in the United States, 1979-1996, in: Deutsch-Amerikanisches Konzil (Hg.), Arbeitsmärkte in den USA und Deutschland, 288-297. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1998). Die Finanzierung von Innovationsprojekten, in: Nikolaus Franke, Christoph-Friedrich von Braun (Hg.), Innovationsforschung und Technologiemanagement. Konzepte, Strategien, Fallbeispiele, 233-248. Berlin: Springer. DOI

• Für kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMU) in Deutschland spielt die Fremdfinanzierung durch Banken eine besonders große Rolle. Allerdings stellen Kredite nur für Investitionsprojekte die bevorzugte Finanzierungsquelle dar, während Innovationen hauptsächlich aus dem Innenfinanzierungsspielraum finanziert werden. Die Bevorzugung interner Finanzierungsquellen wird u. U. durch Informationsasymmetrien hervorgerufen, die eine Fremdfinanzierung insbesondere für kleine und junge Unternehmen prohibitiv teuer machen. Dieser Artikel stellt bisherige Ergebnisse zur Frage von Finanzierungsrestriktionen in einer Literaturübersicht dar und nutzt dann Daten aus einer jüngst abgeschlossenen Unternehmensbefragung, um spezifische Fragen zu beleuchten. Die Datenanalyse zeigt, daß kleine und relativ junge Unternehmen besonders häufig angeben, daß mangelnder Zugang zu zusätzlichem Eigen- und Fremdkapital die Durchführung von Investitionen und Innovationen behindert. Vertrauen und eine relativ lange Geschäftsbeziehung zwischen der wichtigsten Bank und dem Unternehmen sowie eine Konzentration der Fremdkapitalaufnahme auf relativ wenige Banken verbessern die Verfügbarkeit von Fremdkapital. Kleine und junge Unternehmen sehen sich allerdings generell benachteiligt. Ein Gedankenexperiment deutet allerdings auch darauf hin, daß Manager und Eigentümer eine Fremdfinanzierung häufig nicht zur Finanzierung von Projekten heranziehen würden, um nicht in ihrer Entscheidungsfreiheit eingeschränkt zu sein.
• For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Germany, debt finance supplied by banks assumes a particularly prominent role. Yet, loans are the preferred source of finance for investment only, while innovation projects are typically financed out of cash flow. This preference for internal finance is presumably caused by information asymmetries which make external finance prohibitively expensive for small and young firms. This article summarizes prior studies on the incidence of financing constraints and uses recently collected firm-level data to explore particular issues. The data analysis demonstrates that small and relatively young enterprises are particularly likely to indicate that lack of new equity or debt finance is an impediment to investment and innovation activities. Trust between bank and firm, a relatively long duration of the lending relationship, and limiting the borrowing relationships to just a few creditors tend to improve financing conditions. Data from a thought experiment suggest that managers and owners will frequently not use external finance (even if available), since the involvement of banks would limit some form of dependence.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Steil, Fabian (1997). Die ZEW-Gründungspanels: Konzeptionelle Überlegungen und Analysepotential, in: Dietmar Harhoff (Hg.), Unternehmensgründungen - Empirische Analysen für die alten und neuen Bundesländer (ZEW-Wirtschaftsanalysen, 7), 11-28. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Licht, Georg (1995). F&E und Innovation – Meßversuche an einem Eisberg, in: Klaus Löbbe (Hg.), Innovationen, Investitionen und Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der deutschen Wirtschaft (Untersuchungen des Rheinisch-Westfälischen Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung, 16), 11-28. Essen: Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1995). Methodik und Einsatz hedonischer Preisindizes - Ein Überblick, in: Dietmar Harhoff, Michael Müller (Hg.), Preismessung und technischer Fortschritt (ZEW-Wirtschaftsanalysen, 3), 37-60. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1995). Agglomerationen und regionale Spillovereffekte, in: Bernhard Gahlen, Helmut Hesse, Hans Jürgen Ramser (Hg.), Standort und Region. Neue Ansätze zur Regionalökonomik (Wirtschaftswissenschaftliches Seminar Ottobeuren, 24), 83-115. Tübingen: Mohr.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Stahl, Konrad (1994). Unternehmensentwicklung in den neuen Bundesländern - Erste empirische Ergebnisse, in: Heinz König, Viktor Steiner (Hg.), Arbeitsmarktdynamik und Unternehmensentwicklung in Ostdeutschland (ZEW-Wirtschaftsanalysen, 1), 207-251. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Licht, Georg (1994). Das Mannheimer Unternehmenspanel, in: Uwe Hochmuth, J. Wagner (Hg.), Firmenpanelstudien in Deutschland - Konzeptionelle Überlegungen und empirische Analysen (Tübinger volkswirtschaftliche Schriften, 6), 255-284. Tübingen: Francke.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Woywode, Michael J. (1994). Überlebenschancen von Unternehmen - Eine empirische Analyse auf der Basis des Mannheimer Unternehmenspanels, in: Jürgen Schmude (Hg.), Neue Unternehmen - Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zur Gründungsforschung (Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Beiträge, 108), 110-126. Heidelberg: Physica.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Kane, Thomas J. (1994). Financing Apprenticeship Training: Evidence from Germany, in: N. Stacey (Hg.), School-to-Work: What Does Research Say about it?, Washington, D. C.: Office of Educational Research and Improvement (ED).

Harhoff, Dietmar; Felder, J.; Licht, G.; Nerlinger, E. (1994). Ausgewählte Ergebnisse aus der ersten Welle des Mannheimer Innovationspanels, in: Christoph Grenzmann, M. Müller (Hg.), Wissenschafts- und Technologieindikatoren, Technologische Innovationen, 39-69 (Materialien zur Wissenschaftsstatistik, 8), Essen.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1993). Das Wachstum von Unternehmen - Erfahrungen in den USA und Entwicklungen in den neuen Bundesländern, in: Cord Jacobeit, Ute Sacksofsky, Peter Wenzel (Hg.), Die USA am Beginn der neunziger Jahre - Politik, Wirtschaft und Recht, 113-135. Opladen: Leske und Budrich.

• http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-322-93661-5_8

Harhoff, Dietmar; König, Heinz (1993). Neuere Ansätze der Industrieökonomik - Konsequenzen für eine Industrie- und Technologiepolitik, in: Frieder Meyer-Krahmer (Hg.), Innovationsökonomie und Technologiepolitik: Forschungsansätze und politische Konsequenzen (Technik, Wirtschaft und Politik, 1), 47-67. Heidelberg: Physica.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Stahl, Konrad (1993). Unternehmensentwicklung in den neuen Bundesländern, in: ZEW Wirtschaftsanalysen, Bd. 1, 90-112. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Schrader, S. (1992). The Effect of CEO Education and Career Background on Technology Strategy: Statistical Evidence from the United States, in: C. Karlsson (Hg.), Proceedings of the International Product Development Management Conference on New Approaches to Development and Engineering, 205-219. Brüssel: European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management.

Editorials

Veugelers, Reinhilde; Harhoff, Dietmar (2023). New Options for Patenting in Europe, Science, 381 (6654), 111. DOI

Kur, Annette; Harhoff, Dietmar (2014). Great Data, Nice Tale, But What's the Message? The OHIM/EPO Study on the Economic Relevance of IP-Intensive Industries in the EU, IIC - international review of intellectual property and competition law, 45 (6), 617-620. DOI

• Auch veröffentlicht als Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Discussion Paper ; No. 1
• In September 2013, EPO and OHIM jointly launched a Report on the economic performance of IP-intensive industries in the EU. Ever since its publication, the Report has been cited as bearing proof to the economic importance of IP, thereby bolstering claims for further enforcement-enhancing measures and policies. However, the eagerness with which the Report is instrumentalized for political purposes ignores the fact that, as the economists performing the study themselves have emphasized, their findings do not provide evidence regarding the causal relationship between IP and the economic data. Instead of serving a better understanding of the economics of IP, such politically tainted over-interpretations might actually discredit the analytical results and the advances in setting up a comprehensive database of IPR utilization at the firm level.
  
• Also published as: Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Discussion Paper ; No. 1

Andere Veröffentlichungen, Presseartikel, Interviews

Drexl, Josef; Harhoff, Dietmar; Conde Gallego, Beatriz; Slowinski, Peter R. (2024). Position Statement of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition of 6 February 2024 on the Commission's Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on Standard Essential Patents, GRUR International - Journal of European and International IP Law, 73 (7), 647-665. DOI

• The Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition is a research institute within the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science. The Institute is committed to fundamental legal and economic research on processes of innovation and competition and their regulation. Its research focus is on the incentives, determinants and implications of innovation. The Institute informs and guides legal and economic discourse on an impartial basis. It hereby presents its position on the European Commission’s proposal of 27 April 2023 for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on standard essential patents and amending Regulation (EU) 2017/1001.

Wissenschaftlicher Beirat beim Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz; Engel, Christoph; Harhoff, Dietmar; Ockenfels, Axel; Schmidt, Klaus M.; Wambach, Achim (2023). Bundeswehr besser ausrüsten – aber wie? - Gutachten des Wissenschaftlichen Beirats beim Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (BMWK). Berlin: Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz.

• https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Publikationen/Ministerium/Veroeffentlichung-Wissenschaftlicher-Beirat/bundeswehr-besser-ausruesten.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=4

Wissenschaftlicher Beirat beim Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (BMWK); Südekum, Jens; Bierbrauer, Felix; Engel, Christoph; Harhoff, Dietmar; Knieps, Günter; Schmidt, Klaus M.; Wößmann, Ludger (Hg.) (2022). Die Zukunft der Arbeit in der digitalen Transformation - Gutachten des Wissenschaftlichen Beirats beim Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (BMWK). Berlin: Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (BMWK).

• https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Publikationen/Ministerium/Veroeffentlichung-Wissenschaftlicher-Beirat/gutachten-wissenschaftlicher-beirat-die-zukunft-der-arbeit-in-der-digitalen-transformation.pdf

Kommission Niedersachsen 2030; Buchmann, Nina; Falkai, Peter; Foroutan, Naika; Haddadin, Sami; Harhoff, Dietmar; Jürgens, Kerstin; Klie, Thomas; Lotze-Campen, Hermann; Milewski, Nadja; Schallbruch, Martin; Stokman, Antje (Hg.) (2021). Niedersachsen 2030 – Potenziale und Perspektiven - Gutachten der Kommission Niedersachsen 2030. Hannover: Niedersächsische Staatskanzlei.

• https://www.niedersachsen.de/download/166746

Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina e.V., Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften; Harhoff, Dietmar; Janeba, Eckhard; Kübler, Dorothea; Riedel, Nadine; Riphahn, Regina T.; Schmidt, Christoph M.; Schularick, Moritz; Wagner, Gert G.; Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola; Wößmann, Ludger (Hg.) (2021). Ökonomische Konsequenzen der Coronavirus-Pandemie: Diagnosen und Handlungsoptionen - Stellungnahme. Halle: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina e.V., Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften . DOI

Stuerz, Roland; Stumpf, Christian; Putfarken, Hannes; Harhoff, Dietmar (2021). Digitalisierung durch Corona? - Homeoffice im Februar 2021, bidt Analysen und Studien. München: bidt -Bayerisches Forschungsinstitut für Digitale Transformation.

• https://www.bidt.digital/studie-homeoffice3/

Poege, Felix; Harhoff, Dietmar; Gaessler, Fabian; Baruffaldi, Stefano Horst (2020). Excellence Breeds Invention. The Most Highly Cited Papers Feature in the Most Valuable Patents, Research Europe, (510), 11.

• Article "Science Quality and the Value of Inventions" in Science Advances, Vol. 5 (2019) No. 12, eaay7323
• More detailed online version of the article in Research Europe, which was the basis for the printed article.

Stuerz, Roland; Stumpf, Christian; Mendel, Ulrike; Harhoff, Dietmar (2020). Digitalisierung durch Corona? - Verbreitung und Akzeptanz von Homeoffice in Deutschland: Ergebnisse zweier bidt-Kurzbefragungen (bidt Analysen und Studien, Nr. 3). München: bidt -Bayerisches Forschungsinstitut für Digitale Transformation . DOI

• Die Studie gibt Einblick in die Verbreitung und Akzeptanz von Homeoffice in Deutschland im
  Zuge der Coronakrise. Dazu hat das Bayerische Forschungsinstitut für Digitale Transformation (bidt) zwei kurze Onlinebefragungen Ende März 2020 und Mitte Juni 2020 unter jeweils rund 1.500 erwachsenen berufstätigen Internetnutzerinnen und -nutzern durchgeführt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen u. a., wie häufig Befragte vor und während der Coronakrise von zu Hause
  aus arbeiteten und welche Gründe es zuvor für die Nicht-Nutzung von Homeoffice gab.
  Ferner wurde erhoben, wie gut die Arbeitgeberseite auf die Ausweitung von Homeoffice vorbereitet war und ob Schwierigkeiten bei der Nutzung der im Homeoffice eingesetzten Technik vorlagen. Weitere Fragen betrafen die Zufriedenheit mit der Situation bei der Arbeit von zu Hause aus sowie den Wunsch nach mehr Homeoffice und die Einschätzung der Entwicklung von Homeoffice-Angeboten nach der Krise.
• This study provides insights into the prevalence and practice of home office in Germany in
  the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Central to this, the Bavarian Research Institute
  for Digital Transformation (bidt) conducted two short online surveys at the end of March
  2020 and in mid-June 2020. Each one collected around 1,500 responses from working
  adult Internet users. The results show how often respondents worked from home before and during the coronavirus crisis as well as the reasons given for not having worked in home
  office before. Also investigated was how well employers were prepared for the increase in
  home office working, and whether there were any difficulties associated with the technology required to work from home. Other questions captured the satisfaction levels of people
  working from home as well as their desire to do so more often and their estimation of
  how opportunities to work from home might develop once the pandemic was over.

Brachtendorf, Lorenz; Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar (2020). Approximating the Standard Essentiality of Patents – A Semantics-Based Analysis, Report for the EPO Academic Research Programme.

Falck, Oliver; Fichtl, Anita; Lohse, Tobias; Welter, Friederike; Belitz, Heike; von der Hellen, Cedric; Dreher, Carsten; Schwäbe, Carsten; Harhoff, Dietmar; Schnitzer, Monika; Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Cantner, Uwe; Hölzle, Katharina (2019). Steuerliche Forschungsförderung: Wichtiger Impuls für FuE-Aktivitäten oder zu wenig zielgerichtet?, Ifo-Schnelldienst, 72 (9), 3-25.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2019). Unser CO2-Preissystem ist total verkorkst - Interview, VDI Nachrichten, (9), 4-5.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Suyer, Alexander (2019). Mehr Revolution! Impulse für eine agile Innovationspolitik, Die Politische Meinung. (559), 69-74.

Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation; Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Cantner, Uwe; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hölzle, Katharina; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2019). Report - Research, Innovation and Technological Performance in Germany. Berlin: EFI.

• Englischsprachige Ausgabe
• Deutschsprachige Ausgabe

Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI); Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Cantner, Uwe; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hölzle, Katharina; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2019). Gutachten zu Forschung, Innovation und technologischer Leistungsfähigkeit Deutschlands 2019. Berlin: EFI.

• https://www.e-fi.de/publikationen/gutachten

Harhoff, Dietmar; Heumann, Stefan; Jentzsch, Nicola; Lorenz, Philippe (2018). Outline for a German Strategy for Artificial Intelligence. Berlin: Stiftung Neue Verantwortung e.V.

• https://www.stiftung-nv.de/sites/default/files/outline_for_a_german_artificial_intelligence_strategy.pdf
• German Version published under the title: Eckpunkte einer nationalen Strategie für Künstliche Intelligenz

Harhoff, Dietmar; Heumann, Stefan; Jentzsch, Nicola; Lorenz, Philippe (2018). Eckpunkte einer nationalen Strategie für Künstliche Intelligenz. Berlin: Stiftung Neue Verantwortung e.V.

• https://www.stiftung-nv.de/de/publikation/eckpunkte-einer-nationalen-strategie-fuer-kuenstliche-intelligenz
• English version published under the title: Outline for a German Strategy for Artificial Intelligence

Harhoff, Dietmar; Heumann, Stefan (2018). Neue Forschungsbündnisse, Wirtschaftsdienst, 98 (7), 458. DOI

Stuerz, Roland; Suyer, Alexander; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hilty, Reto M. (2018). The Use of Copyright Protected Creative Online Content by German Consumers, Medien und Recht International, 15 (2), 51.

• The question of how copyright-protected content is used on the Internet and, particularly, which conclusions should be drawn from users’ behaviour has been the subject of intense debate for years. To what extent do Internet users download, stream or share content like music, films, series or Video games? What is the share of paid compared to free use? Do users consider their own conduct to be legal, and what are their motives for choosing potentially illegal forms of use?
  The research project carried out by the economic
  and legal departments of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition examines these issues gathering data with a large-scale, representative quantitative Survey of German consumers and analysing it.

Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation; Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Cantner, Uwe; Harhoff, Dietmar; Ott, Ingrid; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2018). Report - Research, Innovation and Technological Performance in Germany. Berlin: EFI.

• English version
• German version

Harhoff, Dietmar (2018). Digitalisierung als Achillesferse - Interview, Megatrend Report M8 - Crossmapping the Future 2018, 273-275.

Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI); Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Cantner, Uwe; Harhoff, Dietmar; Ott, Ingrid; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2018). Gutachten zu Forschung, Innovation und technologischer Leistungsfähigkeit Deutschlands 2018. Berlin: EFI.

• https://www.e-fi.de/publikationen/gutachten

Harhoff, Dietmar; Schnitzer, Monika (2017). Digitale Wüste in deutschen Amtsstuben. Deutschland ist ein E-Government-Entwicklungsland, Handelsblatt 01.11.2017, 20.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2017). Comment on "Does Productivity Growth Threaten Employment?" by David Autor and Anna Salomons, in: ECB Forum on Central Banking - Investment and growth in advanced economies - Conference Proceedings. Frankfurt am Main: European Central Bank, 119-128.

• In their contribution to the 4th ECB Forum, David Autor and Anna Salomons provide a very useful analysis of the employment-productivity growth nexus and a decomposition of employment effects in direct and indirect components. This comment revisits the context of the debate as well as their central results and relates them to other recent analyses in labor economics. Since the session also carries “innovation” in the title, this comment proceeds to discuss causes and potential remedies for slow productivity growth in European countries, including the need for revamped educational and innovation policies as a response to digitization.
• https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/ecb.ecbforumcentralbanking2017.en.pdf
• Event: ECB Forum on Central Banking, Sintra Portugal, 2017-06-26

Harhoff, Dietmar (2017). Deutschlands digitale Zukunft steht auf dem Spiel, MaxPlanckForschung. (3/17), 10-15.

• https://www.mpg.de/11536995/W001_Zur-Sache_010-015.pdf

Anding, Markus; Boes, Andreas; Eckert, Claudia; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hess, Thomas; Münch, Ursula; Pretschner, Alexander (2017). Herausforderungen an der Schnittstelle von Informatik und Gesellschaft - Institutionalisierte Erforschung der Digitalisierung zur Sicherung von Wohlstand und Fortschritt, Informatik Spektrum, 40 (2), 172-175. DOI

Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation; Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Cantner, Uwe; Harhoff, Dietmar; Ott, Ingrid; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2017). Report - Research, Innovation and Technological Performance in Germany. Berlin: EFI.

• English Version
• German Version

Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI); Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Cantner, Uwe; Harhoff, Dietmar; Ott, Ingrid; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2017). Gutachten zu Forschung, Innovation und technologischer Leistungsfähigkeit Deutschlands 2017. Berlin: EFI.

• https://www.e-fi.de/publikationen/gutachten

Harhoff, Dietmar; Hilty, Reto M.; Bechthold, Laura; Jablonka, Claudius; Nothelfer, Stefan; Suyer, Alexander (2016). Urheberrecht und Innovation in digitalen Märkten - Studie im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz. München: Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2016). Digitale Kluft droht - Interview, Unternehmeredition, (3), 14.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2016). Economy and Civil Society: How Innovation Drives Change, CESifo Forum, 16 (3), 38-43.

Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation; Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Cantner, Uwe; Harhoff, Dietmar; Ott, Ingrid; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2016). Report - Research, Innovation and Technological Performance in Germany. Berlin: EFI.

• English version
• German version

Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI); Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Cantner, Uwe; Harhoff, Dietmar; Ott, Ingrid; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2016). Gutachten zu Forschung, Innovation und technologischer Leistungsfähigkeit Deutschlands 2016. Berlin: EFI.

• https://www.e-fi.de/publikationen/gutachten

Harhoff, Dietmar (2015). Europas digitale Mühe - Gastkommentar, Neue Zürcher Zeitung 22.10.2015, 12.

• http://www.nzz.ch/meinung/kommentare/europas-digitale-muehe-ld.2678

Broy, Manfred; Harhoff, Dietmar (2015). Industrie 4.0 ist erst der Anfang, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 13.04.2015, 18.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Cuntz, Alexander (2015). Digitale Transformation – Quo vadis, Deutschland?, Zeitschrift für Politikberatung, 7 (4), 176-188.

• Der vorliegende Beitrag analysiert - aufbauend auf dem Jahresgutachten 2016 der Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation - Wertschöpfungsprozesse, mit denen neue Ideen, Erfindungen und Innovationen im Zuge der "digitalen Transformation" umgesetzt werden. Dazu werden aus ökonomischer Sicht der Status quo und die wirtschaftlichen Potenziale der digitalen Transformation in Deutschland untersucht. Besonderes Augenmerk erfahren zwei Themenbereiche: die Rolle internetbasierter Gründertätigkeit in Deutschland und die Nutzung sogenannter digitaler Geschäftsmodelle in etablierten Unternehmen. Der Beitrag kommentiert darüber hinaus Handlungsoptionen für die Forschungs- und Innovationspolitik (F&I-Politik), die im Zuge des disruptiven Wandels entstehen.

Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation; Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Foray, Dominique; Harhoff, Dietmar; Ott, Ingrid; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2015). Report - Research, Innovation and Technological Performance. Berlin: EFI.

• English Version
• German Version

Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI); Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Foray, Dominique; Harhoff, Dietmar; Ott, Ingrid; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2015). Gutachten zu Forschung, Innovation und technologischer Leistungsfähigkeit Deutschlands 2015. Berlin: EFI.

• https://www.e-fi.de/publikationen/gutachten

Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation; Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Foray, Dominique; Gerybadze, Alexander; Harhoff, Dietmar; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2014). Report - Research, Innovation and Technological Performance in Germany. Berlin: EFI.

• English version
• German version

Harhoff, Dietmar (2014). Urheberrecht: Ein Jahr der (Denk-)blockaden, Das Netz 2014/2015. Jahresrückblick Netzpolitik 2014, 117-118.

Kommission HdF2014plus; Harhoff, Dietmar (Hg.) (2014). Kooperationsmodell Haus der Forschung sowie Bayerische Patentallianz – Empfehlungen zur Weiterentwicklung durch die Kommission HdF2014plus. München: Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Bildung und Kultus, Wissenschaft und Kunst.

• http://www.km.bayern.de/download/9616_hdf2014plus_gesbericht.pdf

Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI); Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Foray, Dominique; Gerybadze, Alexander; Harhoff, Dietmar; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2014). Gutachten zu Forschung, Innovation und technologischer Leistungsfähigkeit Deutschlands 2014. Berlin: EFI.

• https://www.e-fi.de/publikationen/gutachten

Vlaeminck, Sven; Wagner, Gert G.; Wagner, Joachim; Harhoff, Dietmar; Siegert, Olaf (2013). Replizierbare Forschung in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften erhöhen — eine Herausforderung für wissenschaftliche Infrastrukturdienstleister, LIBREAS. Library Ideas - Schwerpunkt: Forschungsdaten. Metadaten. Noch mehr Daten. Forschungsdatenmanagement, (23), 29-42.

• In den Wirtschaftswissenschaften werden empirische Untersuchungen zur Über-prüfung und Weiterentwicklung von theoretischen Modellen immer wichtiger. Dies schlägt sich auch in einer steigenden Anzahl von empirischen Beiträgen in Fachzeitschriften nieder, bei denen Wirtschaftsforschende eigene Forschungsdaten erhoben oder externe Datensätze verarbeitet haben. Allerdings gibt es bislang kaum effektive Möglichkeiten, diese Forschungsergebnisse im Kontext der zugehörigen Zeitschriftenartikel zu replizieren, zu prüfen oder für eine Nachnutzung und zur Unterstützung des wissenschaftlichen Diskurses bereit zu stellen.
• Empirical studies to verify and refine theoretical models are increasingly important in economics. This is also reflected in a rising number of empirical contributions to journals where authors have collected their own research data or used external datasets. However, so far there have been few effective means to replicate the published results within the framework of the corresponding article, to verify it, to make it available for repurposing or to use it to support scholarly debate. Our article reflects some of the principal reasons why economic research often is not replicable and suggests recommendations on how to meet these challenges.
• http://libreas.eu/ausgabe23/06vlaeminck/

Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation; Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Gerybadze, Alexander; Harhoff, Dietmar; Llerena, Patrick; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2013). Report - Research, Innovation and Technological Performance in Germany. Berlin: EFI.

• English version
• German version

Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI); Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Böhringer, Christoph; Gerybadze, Alexander; Harhoff, Dietmar; Llerena, Patrick; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2013). Gutachten zu Forschung, Innovation und technologischer Leistungsfähigkeit in Deutschland 2013. Berlin: EFI.

• https://www.e-fi.de/publikationen/gutachten

Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation; Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Gerybadze, Alexander; Harhoff, Dietmar; Llerena, Patrick; Luther, Joachim; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2012). Report - Research, Innovation and Technological Performance in Germany. Berlin: EFI.

• English version
• German version

Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI); Backes-Gellner, Uschi; Gerybadze, Alexander; Harhoff, Dietmar; Llerena, Patrick; Luther, Joachim; Schnitzer, Monika (Hg.) (2012). Gutachten zu Forschung, Innovation und technologischer Leistungsfähigkeit in Deutschland 2012. Berlin: EFI.

• https://www.e-fi.de/publikationen/gutachten

Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation; Achleitner, Ann-Christin; Allmendinger, Jutta; Gerybadze, Alexander; Harhoff, Dietmar; Llerena, Patrick; Luther, Joachim (Hg.) (2011). Report - Research, Innovation and Technological Performance in Germany. Berlin: EFI.

• English version
• German version

Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI); Achleitner, Ann-Christin; Allmendinger, Jutta; Gerybadze, Alexander; Harhoff, Dietmar; Llerena, Patrick; Luther, Joachim (Hg.) (2011). Gutachten zu Forschung, Innovation und technologischer Leistungsfähigkeit in Deutschland 2011. Berlin: EFI.

• https://www.e-fi.de/publikationen/gutachten

Commission of Experts for Research and Competition; Achleitner, Ann-Christin; Allmendinger, Jutta; Gerybadze, Alexander; Harhoff, Dietmar; Llerena, Patrick; Luther, Joachim (Hg.) (2010). Report - Research, Innovation and Technological Performance in Germany. Berlin: EFI.

• English version
• German version

Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI); Achleitner, Ann-Christin; Allmendinger, Jutta; Gerybadze, Alexander; Harhoff, Dietmar; Llerena, Patrick; Luther, Joachim (Hg.) (2010). Gutachten zu Forschung, Innovation und technologischer Leistungsfähigkeit in Deutschland 2010. Berlin: EFI.

• https://www.e-fi.de/publikationen/gutachten

Von Graevenitz, Georg; Harhoff, Dietmar (2010). The Impact of Recessions on the Utilization of Intellectual Property - Report for the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2009). Economic Cost-Benefit Analysis of a Unified and Integrated European Patent Litigation System, Final Report to the European Commission, 2009.

• The patent system in Europe is still incomplete. Appropriating returns from patented technology is impaired by the fact that patent-holders may have to enforce their patent rights in multiple courts. Moreover, third parties interested in showing that particular patent rights have been granted erroneously are disadvantaged by having to initiate revocation proceedings in multiple jurisdictions.
  Given that the successful pursuit of these two objectives can generate welfare gains for the European economy, a unified European patent litigation system has immediate appeal.
  The current study seeks to provide approximate cost and benefit calculations in order to inform policy-makers in Europe about the choices they face in this important field of public policy. The study groups cost and benefit effects into the following categories: (i) effects from avoiding duplication of litigation; (ii) effects from changes in the demand for litigation, induced by changes in the cost structure; (iii) effects from changed incentives for patenting.
  Towards performing an assessment of the first two effects, the report collects data from a variety of sources in order to support the estimates and to test the plausibility of a number of necessary assumptions. Given that no official data on the incidence, outcomes and cost of patent litigation exist, an effort is made to triangulate data and estimates in order to demonstrate that the approximations are justified.
  The following results are particularly important. Avoiding duplication of infringement and revocation cases is likely to generate large benefits for the European economy. The results obtained here suggest that currently, between 146 and 311 infringement cases are being duplicated annually in the EU Member States. By 2013, this number is likely to increase to between 202 and 431 duplicated cases. Total private savings from having access to a unified Patent Court in 2013 would span the interval between EUR 148 and 289 million.
  An assessment of the operating costs of the proposed Patent Court is obviously subject to a large number of caveats. Based on data from earlier efforts (in particular the Working Party on Litigation set up under the auspices of the European Patent Organisation), an upper-bound estimate for the operating costs of a court with a capacity of 940 cases indicates that the Court would cause operating costs of EUR 27.5 million.
  Hence, the cost-benefit assessment focusing on avoided duplication leads to a highly positive evaluation of the proposal. Even if the low estimate of savings (EUR 148 million) is taken, the new system would create substantial benefits and reach a benefit-cost ratio of 5.4. However, this view may be unduly conservative, and the benefit-cost ratio could be as high as 10.5.
  Additional benefits could flow in case of additional litigation activity, be it in terms of infringement or revocation actions. The availability of a low-cost litigation path offered by a unified Patent Court is likely to lead to additional activity from parties in countries which currently do not use the European patent system extensively. Moreover, the cost level of litigation in the unified Patent Court system is likely to be below the cost levels currently observed in some Member States and parties in these Member States are also likely to engage in more litigation activity in the medium-run. These effects will also contribute to generate private and public benefits.
  The above estimates and considerations are based on the assumption that the unified Patent Court will offer litigation at roughly the same cost level as the three largest low-cost national systems. In a robustness check, the report explores to what extent the gains from saved duplication would be dissipated if the cost level were higher. The computations show that even with a substantial average cost increase, benefit-cost ratios remain above one, and for most scenarios considerably above one.
  It is more difficult to predict cost-induced changes in the demand for litigation. The relevance of such changes will depend on the level and type of costs imposed on users of the new system. These will be mostly determined by the private costs for legal support and advice, but also by the fees levied by the Court itself. Measures to contain the private costs to parties in litigation are important, and the Presidency’s proposal includes a number of such measures which are discussed in the report with respect to their impact. A particularly promising measure is to admit representation of parties by specialized European Patent Attorneys. Another measure of importance is the contribution from the Community budget and from States which are not EU Member States to the Court’s budget, in order to keep fees at low levels.
  The report also discusses – in a qualitative manner – effects which emerge from changes in patenting and litigation incentives. It is argued that effects will be beneficial if the unified patent litigation system puts emphasis on fast and low-cost proceedings, high quality judgement, and a fair balance between the legitimate interests of patent holders and alleged infringers. It is emphasized that particularly strong positive welfare contributions can be expected if an effective and rapid, low-cost revocation procedure is available. The latter feature should provide an effective means against strategic and (possibly) frivolous litigation activity which could be mounted in the future by “patent trolls”. The report also comments on particular design choices in the Presidency’s proposal.
  To summarize, this report recommends strongly that the Presidency should proceed in its efforts to establish a unified and integrated patent litigation system for European patents and future Community patents. For conservative estimates of the relevant parameters, the economic benefits from such a system are likely to exceed the costs of the establishment and operation of the new court by a large multiple of between 5.4 and 10.5. Moreover, with prudent design choices it should be possible to implement a litigation system that will be balanced and supportive of overall efforts to improve the quality of patents in Europe.
• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267839173_Economic_Cost-Benefit_Analysis_of_a_Unified_and_Integrated_European_Patent_Litigation_System

Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation; Harhoff, Dietmar; Allmendinger, Jutta; Achleitner, Ann-Christin; Llerena, Patrick; Luther, Joachim (Hg.) (2009). Report - Research, Innovation and Technological Performance in Germany. Berlin: EFI.

• English version
• German version

Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI); Harhoff, Dietmar; Allmendinger, Jutta; Achleitner, Ann-Christin; Llerena, Patrick; Luther, Joachim (Hg.) (2009). Gutachten zu Forschung, Innovation und technologischer Leistungsfähigkeit in Deutschland 2009. Berlin: EFI.

• https://www.e-fi.de/publikationen/gutachten

Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation; Harhoff, Dietmar; Grupp, Hariolf; Achleitner, Ann-Christin; Allmendinger, Jutta; Luther, Joachim (Hg.) (2008). Report - Research, Innovation and Technological Performance in Germany. Berlin: EFI.

• English version
• German version

Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI); Harhoff, Dietmar; Grupp, Hariolf; Achleitner, Ann-Christin; Allmendinger, Jutta; Luther, Joachim (Hg.) (2008). Gutachten zu Forschung, Innovation und technologischer Leistungsfähigkeit in Deutschland 2008. Berlin: EFI.

• https://www.e-fi.de/publikationen/gutachten

Harhoff, Dietmar (2006). Intellectual Property Rights in Europe – Where do We Stand and Where Should We Go?, 2006.

• Intellectual property rights (IPRs) have recently been subject to numerous, sometimes highly controversial debates in Europe. An arcane technical matter prior to the 1990s, the design of IPR systems now attracts attention, not only among the users of the respective IPR systems, but also more broadly among the citizens of Europe. It is generally accepted that IPRs can play an important role for fostering innovation, but the design choices for IPR systems remain contested. Some of the renewed interest is created by the perception that over the last decades, the IPR systems have strengthened the position of rights owners over those of the users of protected subject matter. This chapter argues that this perception is at least partly correct. In the field of copyright, technical and legal developments have contributed to a shift of control towards commerical content providers. In the area of patent rights, changes in the behavior of applicants have led to strong increases in the demand for patent protection, coupled with some signs of quality deterioration in the patent system. While Europe may have fared relatively well when compared to the US, problems are emerging in the EU as well. From an economic perspective, there is a need for harmonizing European adminstrative and legal practices in the area of IPRs while increasing the quality standards used in these system. Moreover, a new balance between the owners of rights and users of the protected subject matter needs to be found in many fields.
• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240696278_Intellectual_Property_Rights_in_Europe_-_Where_do_We_Stand_and_Where_Should_We_Go

Harhoff, Dietmar (2005). Patente – Fluch oder Segen für Innovationen, Zeitschrift für betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung, Sonderheft 54 (6), 80-104.

Webb, Colin; Dernis, Hélène; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin (2005). Analysing European and International Patent Citations - A Set of EPO Patent Database Building Blocks (STI Working Paper./9). Paris: OECD.

• http://www.oecd.org/sti/35520805.pdf

Harhoff, Dietmar; Gruber, M. Campus Companies - Meinungsspiegel der BFuP, Betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung und Praxis, 54 (4), 388-401.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Franke, N.; Lüthje, C. (2000). Studenten als Unternehmensgründer – Eine empirische Analyse, unpublished manuscript, Institut für Innovationsforschung und Technologiemanagement (INNO-tec), University Munich.

Bellmann, Lutz; Harhoff, Dietmar; Schulz, Norbert (2000). Daten zur Analyse des Gründungsgeschehens – Erwiderung auf die Anmerkungen von Michael Fritsch, Udo Brixy und Michael Niese, ifo-Studien, 2/2000, 279-281.

Bellmann, Lutz; Harhoff, Dietmar; Schulz, Norbert (1999). Zur Analyse von Gründungen und Schließungen auf Grundlage der Beschäftigtenstatistik, ifo-Studien, 3/1999, 435-447.

• Diese Arbeit quantifiziert Verzerrungen, die sich bei der Verwendung von Daten aus der IAB-Beschäftigtenstatistik in Analysen von Betriebsgründungen und -schließungen ergeben können. Wir zeigen, daß bisherige Studien von Gründungs- und Schließungsdaten ausgegangen sind, die im Mittel aller Industrien um mindestens 44 Prozent bei Gründungen bzw. 39 Prozent bei Schließungen zu hoch liegen. Eine Varianzzerlegung zeigt, daß die Verzerrungen in erheblichem Ausmaß durch industrieund zeitspezifische Komponenten erklärt werden können und damit größtenteils systematischer Natur sind. Korrekturen dieser Verzerrungen sind zwar möglich, müssen aber Tradeoffs hinsichtlich der Datenverfügbarkeit" (insbesondere für Panelstudien) berücksichtigen.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Stahl, Konrad O. (1995). Unternehmens- und Beschäftigungsdynamik in Westdeutschland – Zum Einfluß von Haftungsregeln und Eigentümerstruktur, Ifo-Studien, 41 (1), 17-50.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Felder, Johannes; Licht, Georg; Nerlinger, Eric; Stahl, Harald (1995). Innovationsverhalten der deutschen Wirtschaft: Ein Vergleich zwischen Ost- und Westdeutschland (Dokumentation, 95-03). Mannheim: Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Felder, Johannes; Licht, Georg; Nerlinger, Eric; Stahl, Harald (1995). Innovationsverhalten der deutschen Wirtschaft. Dokumentation der Innovationshemmnisse 1994, Bericht im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie. Mannheim: Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Felder, Johannes; Licht, Georg; Nerlinger, Eric; Stahl, Harald (1995). Innovationsverhalten der deutschen Wirtschaft. Ergebnisse der Innovationserhebung 1994, Bericht im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie. Mannheim: Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Beise, M.; Felder, Johannes; Licht, Georg; Nerlinger, Eric; Stahl, Harald (1995). Innovationsverhalten der deutschen Wirtschaft - Innovationsverhalten kleiner und mittlerer Unternehmen, Bericht im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie. Mannheim: Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1994). Telekommunikationsinfrastruktur und Wirtschaftswachstum in den Neuen Bundesländern, Bericht im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Post und Telekommunikation. Mannheim: Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1994). Die steuerliche Behandlung von FuE-Aufwendungen - Eine internationale Bestandsaufnahme (Dokumentation, 94-02). Mannheim: Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Felder, Johannes; Licht, Georg; Nerlinger, Eric; Stahl, Harald (1994). Innovationsverhalten der deutschen Wirtschaft. Ergebnisse der Innovationserhebung 1993 (Dokumentation, 94-01). Mannheim: Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Felder, Johannes; Licht, Georg; Nerlinger, Eric; Stahl, Harald (1994). Innovationsverhalten der deutschen Wirtschaft, Methodenbericht zur Innovationserhebung 1993 (Dokumentation, 94-06). Mannheim: Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Felder, Johannes; Licht, Georg; Nerlinger, Eric; Stahl, Harald (1994). The Community Innovation Survey in the Federal Republic of Germany: Final Report, Bericht im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie für EUROSTAT und die Europäische Kommission DG XIII. Mannheim: Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1991). Unternehmensgründungen in den neuen Bundesländern, ZEW Newsletter, 1 (1), 11-14.

Monographien

Brügge, Bernd; Harhoff, Dietmar; Picot, Arnold; Creighton, Oliver; Fiedler, Marina; Henkel, Joachim (2004). Open Source Software – Technische und ökonomische Aspekte (Open Source Software – Technical and Economic Aspects). Berlin: Springer.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Jacobs, Otto H.; Ramb, Fred; Schmidt, Frank; Spengel, Christoph (1998). Unternehmenssteuerreform, Innovationsförderung und Zukunftsinvestitionen (ZEW- Wirtschaftsanalysen - Schriftenreihe des ZEW, 26). Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1996). Innovation in German Manufacturing Firms - Empirical Studies on Productivity, Externalities, Corporate Finance and Taxation. Unpublished Habilitation, Fakultät Volkswirtschaftslehre und Statistik, Universität Mannheim.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Licht, Georg; Beise, M.; Felder, J.; Nerlinger, E.; Stahl, H. (1996). Innovationsaktivitäten kleiner und mittlerer Unternehmen - Ergebnisse des Mannheimer Innovationspanels (ZEW-Wirtschaftsanalysen - Schriftenreihe des ZEW, 8). Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Harhoff, Dietmar (1991). Strategic Spillover Production, Vertical Organization, and Incentives for Research and Development, Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Diskussionspapiere

Harhoff, Dietmar; Heller, David; Momtaz, Paul P. (2024). Inventor Returns and Mobility, CESifo Working Paper, No. 11449.

• We show that firm and industry, rather than inventor and invention factors, explain more than half of the variation in inventor returns in administrative employer-inventor-patent-linked data from Germany. Between-firm variation in inventive rents is strongly associated with inventor mobility. Inventors are more likely to make a move just before a patent is filed than shortly thereafter and benefit from their move through a mobility-related marginal inventor return. Employers that pay inventor returns in excess of the expected return gain a favorable position in the market for inventive labor with subsequent increases in patent quality and quantity. Consistent with theoretical arguments, effect sizes also depend on employer-inventor technological complementarity, degree of competition, and invention quality.
• https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_11449.html

Ghosh, Mainak; Erhardt, Sebastian; Rose, Michael; Buunk, Erik; Harhoff, Dietmar (2024). PaECTER: Patent-level Representation Learning using Citation-informed Transformers, arXiv preprint 2402.19411. DOI

• PaECTER is a publicly available, open-source document-level encoder specific for patents. We fine-tune BERT for Patents with examiner-added citation information to generate numerical representations for patent documents. PaECTER performs better in similarity tasks than current state-of-the-art models used in the patent domain. More specifically, our model outperforms the next-best patent specific pre-trained language model (BERT for Patents) on our patent citation prediction test dataset on two different rank evaluation metrics. PaECTER predicts at least one most similar patent at a rank of 1.32 on average when compared against 25 irrelevant patents. Numerical representations generated by PaECTER from patent text can be used for downstream tasks such as classification, tracing knowledge flows, or semantic similarity search. Semantic similarity search is especially relevant in the context of prior art search for both inventors and patent examiners. PaECTER is available on Hugging Face.

Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar; Sorg, Stefan; Graevenitz, Georg von (2024). Patents, Freedom to Operate, and Follow-on Innovation: Evidence from Post-Grant Opposition, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper, No. 494.

• We study the blocking effect of patents on follow-on innovation by others. We posit that follow-on innovation requires freedom to operate (FTO), which firms typically obtain through a license from the patentee holding the original innovation. Where licensing fails, follow-on innovation is blocked unless
  firms gain FTO through patent invalidation. Using large-scale data from post-grant oppositions at the European Patent Office, we find that patent invalidation increases follow-on innovation, measured in citations, by 16% on average. This effect exhibits a U-shape in the value of the original innovation.
  For patents on low-value original innovations, invalidation predominantly increases low-value follow-on innovation outside the patentee’s product market. Here, transaction costs likely exceed the joint surplus of licensing, causing licensing failure. In contrast, for patents on high-value original innovations,
  invalidation mainly increases high-value follow-on innovation in the patentee’s product market. We attribute this latter result to rent dissipation, which renders patentees unwilling to license out valuable technologies to (potential) competitors.
• https://rationality-and-competition.de/wp-content/uploads/discussion_paper/494.pdf
• Forthcoming in: Management Science

Drexl, Josef; Harhoff, Dietmar; Conde Gallego, Beatriz; Slowinski, Peter R. (2024). Position Statement of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition of 6 February 2024 on the Commission's Proposal for a Regulation on Standard Essential Patents, Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition Research Paper, No. 24-03.

• Available at SSRN
• Also published in: GRUR International, Volume 73, Issue 7, 2024, 647–665

Erhardt, Sebastian; Ghosh, Mainak; Buunk, Erik; Rose, Michael; Harhoff, Dietmar (2022). Logic Mill - A Knowledge Navigation System, arXiv preprint 2301.00200.

• Logic Mill is a scalable and openly accessible software system that identifies semantically similar documents within either one domain-specific corpus or multi-domain corpora. It uses advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to generate numerical representations of documents. Currently it leverages a large pre-trained language model to generate these document representations. The system focuses on scientific publications and patent documents and contains more than 200 million documents. It is easily accessible via a simple Application Programming Interface (API) or via a web interface. Moreover, it is continuously being updated and can be extended to text corpora from other domains. We see this system as a general-purpose tool for future research applications in the social sciences and other domains.
• https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2301.00200
• Also published in: CEUR Workshop Proceedings 3775

Poege, Felix; Gaessler, Fabian; Hoisl, Karin; Harhoff, Dietmar; Dorner, Matthias (2022). Filling the Gap: The Consequences of Collaborator Loss in Corporate R&D, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 22-17.

• We examine how collaborator loss affects knowledge workers in corporate R&D. We argue that such a loss affects the remaining collaborators not only by reducing their team-specific capital (as argued in the prior literature) but also by increasing their bargaining power over the employer, who is in need of filling the gap left by the lost collaborator to ensure the continuation of R&D projects. This shift in bargaining power may, in turn, lead to benefits, such as additional resources or more attractive working conditions. These benefits can partially compensate for the negative effect of reduced team-specific capital on productivity and influence the career trajectories of the remaining collaborators. We empirically investigate the consequences of collaborator loss by exploiting 845 unexpected deaths of active inventors. We find that inventor death has a moderate negative effect on the productivity of the remaining collaborators. This negative effect disappears when we focus on the remaining collaborators who work for the same employer as the deceased inventor. Moreover, this group is more likely to be promoted and less likely to leave their current employer.
• Available at SSRN

Fritz, Cornelius; De Nicola, Giacomo; Kevork, Sevag; Harhoff, Dietmar; Kauermann, Göran (2022). Modelling the Large and Dynamically Growing Bipartite Network of German Patents and Inventors, arXiv preprint 2201.09744.

• We analyse the bipartite dynamic network of inventors and patents registered within the main area of electrical engineering in Germany to explore the driving forces behind innovation. The data at hand leads to a bipartite network, where an edge between an inventor and a patent is present if the inventor is a co-owner of the respective patent. Since more than a hundred thousand patents were filed by similarly as many inventors during the observational period, this amounts to a massive bipartite network, too large to be analysed as a whole. Therefore, we decompose the bipartite network by utilising an essential characteristic of the network: most inventors tend to stay active only for a relatively short period, while new ones become active at each point in time. Consequently, the adjacency matrix carries several structural zeros. To accommodate for these, we propose a bipartite variant of the Temporal Exponential Random Graph Model (TERGM) in which we let the actor set vary over time, differentiate between inventors that already submitted patents and those that did not, and account for pairwise statistics of inventors. Our results corroborate the hypotheses that inventor characteristics and knowledge flows play a crucial role in the dynamics of invention.
• https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2201.09744
• Also published in: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, Statistics in Society, Volume 186, Issue 3, July 2023, Pages 557–576

Lehnert, Patrick; Pfister, Curdin; Harhoff, Dietmar; Backes-Gellner, Uschi (2022). Innovation Effects and Knowledge Complementarities in a Diverse Research Landscape, Economics of Education Working Paper Series, 0164. Zürich: Universität Zürich, IBW - Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre.

• This paper was previously circulated under the title "Knowledge Complementarities and Patenting: Do New Universities of Applied Sciences Foster Regional Innovation?" (2020)
• We analyse the regional innovation e↵ect of Universities of Applied Sciences
  (UASs) - bachelor-granting three-year colleges teaching and conducting applied
  research - and whether their embeddedness in the diverse landscape of research
  institutions in Germany creates knowledge complementarities. To account for
  endogeneity, we apply fixed e↵ects estimation and implement a self-developed
  proxy for regional economic activity from 30 years of daytime satellite data.
  We find a positive UAS effect on innovation. This effect is substantially larger
  in landscapes with coexisting research institutions, indicating strong knowledge
  complementarities.
• http://repec.business.uzh.ch/RePEc/iso/leadinghouse/0164_lhwpaper.pdf

Potts, Jason; Torrance, Andrew W.; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hippel, Eric A. van (2021). Social Welfare Gains from Innovation Commons: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Implications. DOI

• Innovation commons – which we define as repositories of freely-accessible, "open source" innovation-related information and data - are a very significant resource for innovating and innovation-adopting firms and individuals: Availability of free data and information reduces the innovation-specific private or open investment required to make the next innovative advance. Despite the clear social welfare value of innovation commons under many conditions, academic innovation research and innovation policymaking have to date focused almost entirely on enhancing private incentives to innovate by enabling innovators to keep some types of innovation-related information at least temporarily apart from the commons, via intellectual property rights.
  In this paper, our focus is squarely on innovation commons theory, evidence, and policy implications. We first discuss the varying nature of and contents of innovation commons extant today. We summarize what is known about their functioning, their scale, the value they provide to innovators and to general social welfare, and the mechanisms by which this is accomplished. Perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, and with the important exception of major digital platform firms, we find that many who develop innovation-related information at private cost have private economic incentives to contribute their information to innovation commons for free access by free riders. We conclude with a discussion of the value of more general support for innovation commons, and how this could be provided by increased private and public investment in innovation commons “engineering”, and by specific forms of innovation policymaking to increase social welfare via enhancement of innovation commons.

Brachtendorf, Lorenz; Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar (2020). Truly Standard-Essential Patents? - A Semantics-Based Analysis, CEPR Discussion Paper, 14726. London: Centre for Economic Policy Research.

• Standard-essential patents (SEPs) have become a key element of technical coordination in standard-setting organizations. Yet, in many cases, it remains unclear whether a declared SEP is truly standard-essential. To date, there is no automated procedure that allows for a scalable and objective assessment of SEP status. This paper introduces a semantics-based method for approximating the standard essentiality of patents. We provide details on the procedure that generates the measure of standard essentiality and present the results of several validation exercises. In a first empirical application we illustrate the measure's usefulness in estimating the share of true SEPs in firm patent portfolios for several mobile telecommunication standards. We find firm-level differences that are statistically significant and economically substantial. Furthermore, we observe a general decline in the average share of presumably true SEPs between successive standard generations.
• https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=14726
• Also published in: Journal of Economics & Management Strategy

Baruffaldi, Stefano Horst; van Beuzekom, Brigitte; Dernis, Hélène; Harhoff, Dietmar; Rao, Nandan; Rosenfeld, David; Squicciarini, Mariagrazia (2020). Identifying and Measuring Developments in Artificial Intelligence: Making the Impossible Possible, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers, No. 2020/05. DOI

• This paper identifies and measures developments in science, algorithms and technologies related to artificial intelligence (AI). Using information from scientific publications, open source software (OSS) and patents, it finds a marked increase in AI-related developments over recent years. Since 2015, AI-related publications have increased by 23% per year; from 2014 to 2018, AI-related OSS contributions grew at a rate three times greater than other OSS contributions; and AI-related inventions comprised, on average, more than 2.3% of IP5 patent families in 2017. China’s growing role in the AI space also emerges. The analysis relies on a three-pronged approach based on established bibliometric and patent-based methods, and machine learning (ML) implemented on purposely collected OSS data.

Schlegel, Tobias; Pfister, Curdin; Harhoff, Dietmar; Backes-Gellner, Uschi (2020). Heterogeneous Regional Innovation Spillovers of Universities of Applied Sciences, Economics of Education Working Paper Series, 0161. Zürich: Universität Zürich, IBW - Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre.

• Research shows that tertiary educational expansions positively influence innovation activities in regional economies. However, this finding is predominantly based on average effects, while potential heterogeneity in the innovation effects due to regional differences in economic preconditions is far less considered. Furthermore, most studies examine educational expansions linked to universities, i.e., traditional academic universities that focus on basic research. Less is known about the impact of educational expansions through universities of applied sciences (UASs), i.e., tertiary education institutions that teach and conduct applied research. We investigate the regional heterogeneity in the innovation effects from the quasi-random establishment of UASs in Switzerland. Relying on patent and business census data, we analyze the influence and importance of three economic preconditions-labor market strength, labor market density and high tech intensity-on the innovation effects of UASs. Our results show that only regions with a strong or a dense labor market or with an above average high tech intensity experience significant innovation effects of UASs. However, comparing the relative importance of the three economic preconditions, we find that the labor market strength is the most important factor that drives heterogeneity. These findings are particularly important for policymakers who are choosing the locations of tertiary education institutions.
• https://ideas.repec.org/p/iso/educat/0161.html
• Published in: The Journal of Technology Transfer 47, 63–118 (2022) under the Title: Innovation Effects of Universities of Applied Sciences: an Assessment of Regional Heterogeneity

Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar; Sorg, Stefan (2019). Bargaining Failure and Freedom to Operate: Re-Evaluating the Effect of Patents on Cumulative Innovation, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 19-11. DOI

• Also published as: CEPR Discussion Paper 13969

Bauer, Verena; Harhoff, Dietmar; Kauermann, Göran (2019). A Smooth Dynamic Network Model for Patent Collaboration Data, arXiv preprint 1909.00736.

• The development and application of models, which take the evolution of networks with a dynamical structure into account are receiving increasing attention. Our research focuses on a profile likelihood approach to model time-stamped event data for a large-scale network applied on patent collaborations. As event we consider the submission of a joint patent and we investigate the driving forces for collaboration between inventors. We propose a flexible semiparametric model, which allows to include covariates built from the network (i.e. collaboration) history.
• https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.00736.pdf
• Published in: AStA - Advances in Statistical Analysis, 106, 97-116

Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar; Sorg, Stefan (2019). Bargaining Failure and Freedom to Operate: Re-evaluating the Effect of Patents on Cumulative Innovation, CEPR Discussion Paper, 13969.

• We investigate the causal effect of patent rights on cumulative innovation, using large-scale data that approximate the patent universe in its technological and economic variety. We introduce a novel instrumental variable for patent invalidation that exploits personnel scarcity in post-grant opposition at the European Patent Ofï¬ ce. We ï¬ nd that patent invalidation leads to a highly signiï¬ cant and sizeable increase of follow-on inventions. The effect is driven by cases where the removal of the individual exclusion right creates substantial freedom to operate for third parties. Importantly, our results suggest that bargaining failure between original and follow-on innovators is not limited to environments commonly associated with high transaction costs.
• https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/13969.html
• Also published as: Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 19-11

Poege, Felix; Harhoff, Dietmar; Gaessler, Fabian; Baruffaldi, Stefano Horst (2019). Science Quality and the Value of Inventions, arXiv preprint 1903.05020.

• Despite decades of research, the relationship between the quality of science and the value of inventions has remained unclear. We present the result of a large-scale matching exercise between 4.8 million patent families and 43 million publication records. We find a strong positive relationship between quality of scientific contributions referenced in patents and the value of the respective inventions. We rank patents by the quality of the science they are linked to. Strikingly, high-rank patents are twice as valuable as low-rank patents, which in turn are about as valuable as patents without direct science link. We show this core result for various science quality and patent
  value measures. The effect of science quality on patent value remains relevant even when science is linked indirectly through other patents. Our findings imply that what is considered “excellent” within the science sector also leads to outstanding outcomes in the technological or commercial realm.
• https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.05020.pdf
• Also published in Science Advances 2019, Vol. 5, No. 12, eaay7323

Gaessler, Fabian; Hall, Bronwyn H.; Harhoff, Dietmar (2019). Should There Be Lower Taxes on Patent Income?, CRC Discussion Paper (CRC/TR 190 Rationality and Competition), No. 177.

• A "patent box" is a term for the application of a lower corporate tax rate to the income derived from the ownership of patents. This tax subsidy instrument has been introduced in a number of countries since 2000. Using comprehensive data on patents filed at the European Patent Office, including information on ownership transfers pre- and post-grant, we investigate the impact of the introduction of a patent box on international patent transfers, on the choice of ownership location, and on invention in the relevant country. We find that the impact on transfers is small but present, especially when the tax instrument contains a development condition and for high value patents (those most likely to have generated income), but that invention itself is not affected. This calls into question whether the patent box is an effective instrument for encouraging innovation in a country, rather than simply facilitating the shifting of corporate income to low tax jurisdictions.
• https://rationality-and-competition.de/wp-content/uploads/discussion_paper/177.pdf
• Also published as Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 18-18
• Published in: Research Polic, Volume 50, Issue 1, January 2021, 104129

Ciaramella, Laurie; Gaessler, Fabian; Hall, Bronwyn H.; Harhoff, Dietmar (2019). Patent Transfers and Patent Citations, HAL archives ouvertes, No. hal-02307096.

Gaessler, Fabian; Hall, Bronwyn H.; Harhoff, Dietmar (2018). Should There Be Lower Taxes on Patent Income?, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 18-18.

• A “patent box” is a term for the application of a lower corporate tax rate to the income derived from the ownership of patents. This tax subsidy instrument has been introduced in a number of countries since 2000. Using comprehensive data on patent filings at the European Patent Office, including information on ownership transfers pre‐ and post‐grant, we investigate the impact of the introduction of a patent box on international patent transfers, on the choice of ownership location, and on invention in the relevant country. We find that the impact on transfers is small but present, especially when the tax instrument contains a development condition and for high value patents (those most likely to have generated income), but that invention itself is not affected. This calls into question whether the patent box is an effective instrument for encouraging innovation in a country, rather than simply facilitating the shifting of corporate income to low tax jurisdictions.
• Available at SSRN
• Also published as: NBER Working Paper No. w24843
• Also published as CRC Discussion Paper No. 177
• Also published in: Research Policy Volume 50, Issue 1, January 2021, 104129

Mueller-Langer, Frank; Fecher, Benedikt; Harhoff, Dietmar; Wagner, Gert (2018). Replication Studies in Economics: How Many and Which Papers Are Chosen for Replication, and Why?, JRC Digital Economy Working Paper-01.

• We investigate how often replication studies are published in empirical economics and what types of journal articles are eventually replicated. We find that from 1974 to 2014 0.10% of publications in the Top 50 economics journals were replications. We take into account the results of replication (negating or reinforcing) and the extent of replication: narrow replication studies are typically devoted to mere replication of prior work while scientific replication studies provide a broader analysis. We find evidence that higher-impact articles and articles by authors from leading institutions are more likely to be subject to published replication studies whereas the probability of published replications is lower for articles that appeared in higher-ranked journals. Our analysis also suggests that mandatory data disclosure policies may have a positive effect on the incidence of replication.
• https://ideas.repec.org/p/ipt/decwpa/2018-01.html
• Also published in Research Policy, 48(1), 62-83

Dorner, Matthias; Harhoff, Dietmar; Gaessler, Fabian; Hoisl, Karin; Poege, Felix (2018). Linked Inventor Biography Data 1980-2014, FDZ Data Report, No. 03/2018.

• This data report describes the Linked Inventor Biography Data 1980-2014 (INV-BIO ADIAB 8014), its generation using record linkage and machine learning methods as well as how to access the data via the FDZ.
• Dieser Datenreport beschreibt die verknüpften Erfinderbiografiedaten 1980-2014 (INV-BIO ADIAB 8014), deren Erstellung mittels Record Linkage und Machine Learning Methoden sowie den Datenzugang über das FDZ.
• http://doku.iab.de/fdz/reporte/2018/DR_03-18_EN.pdf

Harhoff, Dietmar; Hilty, Reto M.; Stuerz, Roland; Suyer, Alexander (2018). Nutzung urheberrechtlich geschützter Inhalte im Internet durch deutsche Verbraucher - Ergebnisübersicht einer repräsentativen quantitativen Erhebung. München: Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb.

• https://www.ip.mpg.de/fileadmin/ipmpg/content/projekte/Nutzerverhalten_Kurzbericht.pdf

Dorner, Matthias; Harhoff, Dietmar (2017). A Novel Technology-Industry Concordance Table Based on Linked Inventor-Establishment Data, Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition Research Paper, No. 17-10.

• Mapping technologies into industries is frequently required in empirical innovation studies, but many concordances only provide coarse mappings. We develop novel concordance tables between industries and technologies making use of linked inventor-employee patent data for Germany. The data comprise 235,933 patents filed between 1999 and 2011 at the European Patent Office. Data on inventors are matched and disambiguated with social security records available at the Institute for Employment Research. Employment data recorded in this database include detailed industry codes describing the industrial activities of the inventors’ establishments. The linked inventor-establishment microdata allow us to identify the precise industry of origin of inventions, combine them with technology classifications from the inventors’ patents and to generate novel concordance tables. We evaluate our approach by comparing the concordance tables with existing work, and we discuss the validity of patent statistics by industries as indicators for innovation.
• Available at SSRN
• Also published in: Research Policy, Vol. 47, No. 4 (2018), 768-781

Mueller-Langer, Frank; Fecher, Benedikt; Harhoff, Dietmar; Wagner, Gert G. (2017). The Economics of Replication, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 17-03.

• Revise-and-Resubmit, Research Policy
• Replication studies are considered a hallmark of good scientific practice. Yet they are treated among researchers as an ideal to be professed but not practiced. To provide incentives and favorable boundary conditions for replication practice, the main stakeholders need to be aware of what drives replication. Here we investigate how often replication studies are published in empirical economics and what types of journal articles are replicated. We find that from 1974 to 2014 less than 0.1% of publications in the top-50 economics journals were replications. We do not find empirical support that mandatory data disclosure policies or the availability of data or code have a significant effect on the incidence of replication. The mere provision of data repositories may be ineffective, unless accompanied by appropriate incentives. However, we find that higher-impact articles and articles by authors from leading institutions are more likely to be subject of published replication studies whereas the replication probability is lower for articles published in higher-ranked journals.
• SSRN

Dorner, Matthias; Harhoff, Dietmar (2017). A Novel Technology-Industry Concordance Table Based on Linked Inventor-Establishment Data, FDZ-Methodenreport, 07/2017.

• Die Verknüpfung von Industrie- und Technologiedaten wird häufig für empirischen Arbeiten zu Innovation benötigt. Die Verwendbarkeit existierender Konkordanztabellen ist jedoch durch deren Methodik bzw. Kompatibilitätsprobleme der Daten in der Praxis oftmals stark eingeschränkt. Dieser Methodenreport stellt einen neuartigen Ansatz zur Generierung von Konkordanztabellen vor, der auf verknüpften Erfinder-Betriebs-Daten basiert. Diese Daten enthalten Angaben zu 235,933 Patenten, welche von Erfindern in Deutschland zwischen 1999 und 2011 beim Europäischen Patentamt angemeldet wurden. Erfinder in den Patentdaten wurden mit Beschäftigten in Erwerbsbiografiedaten des Instituts für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB) mittels Record Linkage verknüpft und disambiguiert. Aus der Kombination von industrieller Tätigkeit der Betriebe in denen Erfinder zum Zeitpunkt ihrer Patentanmeldungen arbeiten und den Angaben zu Technologien der angemeldeten Patente, lassen sich mittels Aggregation neuartige, auf Mikrodaten basierende Konkordanztabellen erstellen. Wir vergleichen unsere Technologie-Industrie Konkordanztabellen mit existierenden Ansätzen. Weiterhin wird die Verwendung von Patentindikatoren, die mit der vorgestellten Konkordanztabelle geschätzt wurden, als Maß für die Innovationsstärke von Industrien diskutiert.
• Mapping technologies into industries is frequently required in empirical innovation studies, but many concordances only provide coarse mappings. We develop novel concordance tables between industries and technologies making use of linked inventor-employee patent data for Germany. These data comprise 235,933 patents filed between 1999 and 2011 at the European
  Patent Office. Data on inventors are matched and disambiguated with social security records available at the Institute for Employment Research. Employment data recorded in this database include detailed industry codes describing the industrial activities of the inventors’
  establishments. The linked inventor-establishment microdata allow us to identify the precise industry of origin of inventions, combine them with technology classifications from the inventors' patents and to generate novel concordance tables. We evaluate our approach by
  comparing the concordance tables with existing work, and we discuss the validity of patent statistics by industries as indicators for innovation.
• Also published in: Research Policy, Vol. 47, No. 4(2018), 768-781
• Also published as: Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 17-10

Pfister, Curdin; Rinawi, Miriam; Harhoff, Dietmar; Backes-Gellner, Uschi (2016). Regional Innovation Effects of Applied Research Institutions, Working Paper / Swiss Leading House, No. 117.

• We analyze the effect of applied research institutions on regional innovation activity. Exploiting a policy reform that creates tertiary education institutions conducting applied research, the Universities of Applied Sciences (UASs) in Switzerland, we apply difference-in-differences estimations to investigate the effect on innovation quantity and quality. Findings show a 7.7 to 13 percent increase in regional patenting activity (i.e., quantity), and a 1.3 to 11 percent increase in patent family size, and the number of granted patents, claims, and citations per patent (i.e., quality). Findings are robust to various model specifications, suggesting that applied research taught in UASs boosts regional innovation.
• https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-152802
• Publishd in: Research Policy, Volume 50, Issue 4, May 2021, 104197

Bender, Stefan; Dorner, Matthias; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hinz, Tina; Hoisl, Karin (2016). Social Ties for Labor Market Access - Lessons from the Migration of East German Inventors, CEPR Discussion Paper, No. 11601.

• We study the impact of social ties on the migration of inventors from East to West Germany, using the fall of the Iron Curtain and German reunification as a natural experiment. We identify East German inventors via their patenting track records prior to 1990 and their social security records in the German labor market after reunification. Modeling inventor migration to West German regions after 1990, we find that Western regions with stronger historically determined social ties across the former East-West border attracted more inventors after the fall of the Iron Curtain than regions without such ties. However, mobility decisions made by inventors with outstanding patenting track records (star inventors) were not impacted by social ties. We conclude that social ties support labor market access for migrant inventors and determine regional choices while dependence on these ties is substantially reduced for star performers.
• http://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=11601

Dorner, Matthias; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hinz, Tina; Hoisl, Karin; Bender, Stefan (2016). Social Ties for Labor Market Access – Lessons from the Migration of East German Inventors, IAB Discussion Paper, 41/2016.

• Diese Studie untersucht den Einfluss von sozialen Beziehungen auf die Arbeitsmarktmigration von in der DDR aktiven Erfindern, die ab 1990 nach Westdeutschland abgewandert sind. Wir verwenden den Fall des Eisernen Vorhangs sowie die anschließende deutsch-deutsche Wiedervereinigung als natürliches Experiment. Unsere Analysepopulation umfasst Erfinder aus den DDR-Patentdaten vor 1990, welche mit Sozialversicherungsdaten im wiedervereinigten Deutschland verknüpft werden konnten. Wir modellieren Migrationsflüsse dieser Erfinder in westdeutsche Regionen und finden, dass regionale Arbeitsmärkte, die stärker ausgeprägte soziale Beziehungen vor der Wende aufwiesen, die bevorzugten Wanderungsziele von Erfindern waren. Zusätzlich zeigen unsere Analysen, dass "Star-Erfinder", die an potenziell wertvolleren DDR-Erfindungen beteiligt waren, in ihren Migrationsentscheidungen nicht von sozialen Beziehungen abhängig waren. Wir schließen daraus, dass soziale Beziehungen Migration positiv unterstützen und auch die Wahl des regionalen Arbeitsmarktes beeinflussen. Allerdings können hierbei personenbezogene Produktivitätsindikatoren die Abhängigkeit und Nutzung von soziale Beziehungen substituieren.
• http://www.iab.de/183/section.aspx/Publikation/k161207304

Zwick, Thomas; Frosch, Katharina; Hoisl, Karin; Harhoff, Dietmar (2015). The Power of Individual-Level Drivers of Inventive Performance, ZEW Discussion Paper, No. 15-080. Mannheim: ZEW, Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung.

• Based on an established theoretical framework of the drivers of inventive performance, the so-called KSAO (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other) factors, this paper seeks to explain empirically the performance of inventors throughout their careers. We combine survey information spanning the
  inventors’ entire careers and psychometric test evidence, with patent history data for more than 1,000 inventors. We also control for variables that have traditionally been included in estimations of inventive performance such as inventor age and a broad list of applicant institution-, technology-, patent-, and period-related information. We show that educational level, skills acquired during the career, personality traits, career motivations, cognitive abilities, and cognitive problem-solving style are significantly related to inventive performance.
• http://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp15080.pdf
• Also published in: Research Policy, 46 (2017) 1, 121 - 137

Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, Bruno van; Vandeput, Charlotte (2015). Languages, Fees and the International Scope of Patenting, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 15-04. DOI

• This paper analyzes firms’ choices regarding the geographic scope of patent protection within the European patent system. We develop an econometric model at the patent level to quantify the impact of office fees and translation costs on firms’ decision to validate a patent in a particular country once it has been granted by the EPO. These costs have been disregarded in previous studies. The results suggest that both translation costs and fees for validation and renewals have a strong influence on the behavior of applicants.
• Also published in: V. Ginsburgh, S. Weber (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Economics and Language, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 403-422

Harhoff, Dietmar; Stoll, Sebastian (2015). Exploring the Opaqueness of the Patent System - Evidence from a Natural Experiment, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 15-02.

• One of the objectives of patent systems is to disclose information which other agents can build on in further inventions and in their decision-making. While some observers take it as given that real-world patent systems serve this objective, we argue in this article that patent systems are highly opaque and likely to be of limited value as a source of information. We use data from a natural experiment to explore this issue. Requests for accelerated examination used to be publicly observable at the European Patent Office (EPO). Starting in December 2001, the EPO started to treat these requests as confidential information. Using data on acceleration requests which were historically known only to the applicant and the EPO, and later provided to us, we test whether the change in the information regime impacted the actions of applicants and their rivals. We develop a theoretical model of acceleration requests and patent opposition to identify the extent to which the patent system is opaque. We confirm empirically that opposition and acceleration rates of high-value patents change significantly in most technological areas once acceleration requests become unobservable. We interpret these results as evidence that the system is highly opaque in many fields.
• Available at SSRN

Frosch, Katharina; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Steinle, Christian; Zwick, Thomas (2015). Humankapitalakkumulation von deutschen Erfindern in Schlüsseltechnologien, Praxisbericht zum DFG-Projekt ”Clean Technology-Innovationen in Deutschland: Humankapitalakkumulation bei heterogenen Wissensinputs“ (GZ: ZW 172/2-1).

Frosch, Katharina; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Steinle, Christian; Zwick, Thomas (2015). Clean Technology Innovations in Germany: Human Capital Accumulation under Heterogenous Knowledge Inputs, Daten- und Methodenbericht zum DFG-Projekt ”Clean Technology-Innovationen in Deutschland: Humankapitalakkumulation bei heterogenen Wissensinputs“ (GZ: ZW 172/2-1).

Frosch, Katharina; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Steinle, Christian; Zwick, Thomas (2015). Candidate Screening for the Recruitment of Critical Research and Development Workers – A Report and Preliminary Results with Evidence from Experimental Data from German High-Tech Firms, ZEW Discussion Paper, No. 15-002.

• The report focuses on résumé-based screening strategies for the recruitment of highly qualified research and development (R&D) workers (critical R&D workers) in high-tech firms. We investigate which kinds of professional background, job-related experience, motivations, specific skills, and previous inventive activity make a candidate attractive for firms specializing in clean technology or mechanical elements. The report is based on a combination of survey and experimental data collected from 194 HR decision makers in German high-tech firms and from 89 technology experts in the clean technology and mechanical elements fields. A mixed logit model is used to analyse hiring preferences because this model allows us to deal with repeated choices. We find that HR decision makers prefer candidates with technology-specific patenting experience, an engineering background, analytical thinking skills, and a strong desire to develop path-breaking technologies. Furthermore, no one-size-fits-all candidate exists that is equally preferred in both technology fields. HR decision makers in mechanical element firms prefer specialists to generalists, whereas those in clean technology attach special importance to a candidate’s orientation towards environmental concerns and sustainability.
• http://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp15002.pdf

Frosch, Katharina; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Steinle, Christian; Zwick, Thomas (2015). Individual Determinants of Inventor Productivity: Report and Preliminary Results with Evidence from Linked Human Capital and Patent Data, ZEW Discussion Paper, No. 15-001.

• This report offers new insights into the drivers of inventor productivity at the individual level. It includes well-known drivers, such as inventor age and education, and controls for inventor team size, and firm/applicant information, as well as period and technology field effects derived from patent data. In addition, it adds inventor characteristics that have been largely neglected in existing studies on inventor productivity, such as the breadth of work experience, divergent thinking skills, cognitive problem-solving skills, the use of knowledge sourced from networks within and outside of the inventors’ field of expertise, and personality traits. The empirical model draws on a new dataset that matches information about inventors’ human capital, such as creative skills, personality traits, networks, and career biographies (collected with a self-administered survey) with patenting histories for 1932 German inventors between the years 1978 and 2012 for clean technology, nanotechnology, and mechanical elements. Our results indicate that the additional inventor characteristics double the proportion of total variation of productivity explained by individual characteristics. Furthermore, we find differences in the importance of individual characteristics across industries and along the productivity distribution, between more and less productive inventors.
• http://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp15001.pdf

Cremers, Katrin; Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar; Helmers, Christian (2014). Invalid But Infringed? An Analysis of Germany's Bifurcated Patent Litigation System, ZEW - Centre for European Economic Research Discussion Paper, No. 14-072. DOI

• We analyze the impact of the probabilistic nature of patents on the functioning of Germany’s bifurcated patent litigation system where infringement and validity of a patent are decided independently by different courts. We show that bifurcation creates situations in which a patent is held infringed that is subsequently invalidated. Our conservative estimates indicate that 12% of infringement cases in which the patent’s validity is challenged produce such ‘invalid but infringed’ decisions. We also show that having to challenge a patent’s validity in separate court proceedings means that more resource-constrained alleged infringers are less likely to do so. We find evidence that ‘invalid but infringed’ decisions create uncertainty which firms that were found to infringe an invalid patent attempt to reduce by filing more oppositions against newly granted patents immediately afterwards.
• Also published as: Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Volume 131, Part A, November 2016, 218-242
• Also published as Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 14-14

Cremers, Katrin; Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar; Helmers, Christian (2014). Invalid But Infringed? An Analysis of Germany's Bifurcated Patent Litigation System, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 14-14. DOI

• We analyze the impact of the probabilistic nature of patents on the functioning of Germany’s bifurcated patent litigation system where infringement and validity of a patent are decided independently by different courts. We show that bifurcation creates situations in which a patent is held infringed that is subsequently invalidated. Our conservative estimates indicate that 12% of infringement cases in which the patent’s validity is challenged produce such ‘invalid but infringed’ decisions. We also show that having to challenge a patent’s validity in separate court proceedings means that more resource-constrained alleged infringers are less likely to do so. We find evidence that ‘invalid but infringed’ decisions create uncertainty which firms that were found to infringe an invalid patent attempt to reduce by filing more oppositions against newly granted patents immediately afterwards.
• Also published in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Volume 131, Part A, 2016, 218 - 242
• Also published as ZEW - Centre for European Economic Research Discussion Paper No. 14-072

Harhoff, Dietmar; Heibel, M.C.; Hoisl, Karin (2014). The Impact of Network Structure and Network Behavior on Inventor Productivity.

Gambardella, Alfonso; Giuri, Paola; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Mariani, Myriam; Nagaoka, S; Torrisi, S. (2014). Invention Processes and Economic Uses of Patents: Evidence from the PatVal 2 Survey.

Dorner, Matthias; Bender, Stefan; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Scioch, Patrycja (2014). A Technology-Industry Correspondence Based on Linked Inventor-Establishment Data.

Dorner, Matthias; Bender, Stefan; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Scioch, Patrycja (2014). The MPI-IC-IAB-Inventor data 2002 (MIID 2002): Record-linkage of Patent Register Data with Labor Market Biography Data of the IAB, FDZ-Methodenreport, 06/2014, Nuremberg.

• Der Methodenreport beschreibt die Erstellung eines verknüpften Erfinder-Betriebs-Datensatzes, den MPI-IC-IAB Erfinder Daten 2002 (MIID 2002), unter Verwendung von Methoden des Record Linkage. Der Datensatz verknüpft Patent-Register-Daten zu Patentanmeldungen von in Deutschland wohnhafter Erfindern beim Deutschen Patent- und Markenamt (DPMA) im Jahr 2002 mit Erwerbsbiografiedaten zu sozialversicherungspflichtig Beschäftigten des Instituts für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB). Insgesamt umfasst der Datensatz 46,180 eindeutig identifizierte Beschäftigten-Erfinder Paare und die von diesen Personen im Jahr 2002 angemeldeten 42,435 Patente. Durch das breite Spektrum an Variablen, das eine Vielzahl von Individual- und Betriebsmerkmalen mit Informationen zu Patenten und Erfindern umfasst, bieten die MIID 2002 Daten eine neuartige, auf administrativen Daten beruhende Datenbasis zur Erforschung von Erfindern und deren Patentaktivitäten im Kontext des Arbeitsmarktes

Harhoff, Dietmar; Wagner, Stefan; Pötzl, Matthias; Natterer, Michael; Graevenitz, Georg von (2014). Measuring Patent Thickets.

Dorner, Matthias; Bender, Stefan; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin (2014). Patterns and Determinants of Inventor Mobility - Evidence from the Employment Biographies of Inventors in Germany (unpublished manuscript).

Cremers, Katrin; Ernicke, Max; Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar; Helmers, Christian; McDonagh, Luke; Schliessler, Paula; van Zeebroeck, Nicolas (2013). Patent Litigation in Europe, ZEW Discussion Paper, No. 13-072.

• We compare patent litigation cases across four European jurisdictions – Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the UK – covering cases filed during the period 2000-2008. For our analysis, we assemble a new dataset that contains detailed information at the case, litigant, and patent level for patent cases filed at the major courts in the four jurisdictions. We find substantial differences across jurisdictions in terms of case loads. Courts in Germany hear by far the largest number of cases in absolute terms, but also when taking country size into account. We also find important between-country differences in terms of outcomes, the share of cases that is appealed, as well as the characteristics of litigants and litigated patents. A considerable number of patents are litigated in multiple jurisdictions, but the majority of patents are subject to litigation only in one of the four jurisdictions.
• http://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp13072.pdf
• Also published in European Journal of Law and Economics, August 2017, Volume 44, Issue 1, 1–44

Gambardella, Alfonso; Harhoff, Dietmar; Verspagen, Bart (2013). The Economic Value of Patent Portfolios, CEPR Discussion Paper, 9264. London: Centre for Economic Research.

• http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=9264
• Also published in: Journal of Economics & Management Strategy 26,4 (2017), 735–756

Harhoff, Dietmar; von Graevenitz, Georg; Wagner, Stefan (2013). Conflict Resolution, Public Goods and Patent Thickets, CEPR Discussion Paper, No. 9468. London: Centre for Economic Policy Research.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Thoma, Grid (2011). Inventor Location and the Internationalization of R&D, unpublished manuscript, University of Munich.

• R&D is becoming increasingly globalized, but R&D statistics have not kept up with this development. Firm-level data capture R&D investments irrespective of location, and OECD survey data typically capture only R&D performed within national territorial boundaries. In this paper we rely on information regarding the location of a firm’s inventors and develop a method of quantifying the R&D investments by country of inventive activity. For 3,024 European and US business group and their subsidiaries we have identified all inventors and their locations at the time of invention. In year 2000 these corporations accounted for about 80% of the overall intramural R&D in their countries as reflected in OECD data. Comparing inventor count data to consolidated R&D expenditures we find high correlations both in levels and growth rates. We estimate production function and market value regressions taking the geographical distribution of a firm’s inventive activities into account. Foreign-located inventors contribute significantly to productivity growth and market value.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2011). The Social Value of Patent Disclosure, unpublished manuscript, University of Munich.

Harhoff, Dietmar (2011). Deferred Patent Examination – Searching for a Double Dividend, unpublished manuscript, University of Munich.

Thoma, Grid; Torrisi, Salvatore; Gambardella, Alfonso; Guellec, Dominique; Hall, Bronwyn H.; Harhoff, Dietmar (2010). Harmonizing and Combining Large Datasets – An Application to Firm-Level Patent and Accounting Data, NBER Working Paper, 15851. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research. DOI

Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, B. (2009). Languages, Fees and the Regional Scope of Patenting in Europe.

Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Webb, Colin (2009). European Patent Citations – How to Count and How to Interpret them, unpublished manuscript, University of Munich.

Haeussler, Carolin; Harhoff, Dietmar; Mueller, Elisabeth (2008). To Be Financed or Not… - The Role of Patents for Venture Capital Financing, CEPR Discussion Paper, 7115. London: Centre for Economic Policy Research.

• This paper investigates how patent applications and grants held by new ventures improve their ability to attract venture capital (VC) financing. We argue that investors are faced with considerable uncertainty and therefore rely on patents as signals when trying to assess the prospects of potential portfolio companies. For a sample of VC-seeking German and British biotechnology companies we have identified all patents filed at the European Patent Office (EPO). Applying hazard rate analysis, we find that in the presence of patent applications, VC financing occurs earlier. Our results also show that VCs pay attention to patent quality, financing those ventures faster which later turn out to have high-quality patents. Patent oppositions increase the likelihood of receiving VC, but ultimate grant decisions do not spur VC financing, presumably because they are anticipated. Our empirical results and interviews with VCs suggest that the process of patenting generates signals which help to overcome the liabilities of newness faced by new ventures.

Haagen, F.; Häußler, C.; Harhoff, Dietmar; Murray, G.; Rudolph, B. (2007). Finding the Path to Success – The Structure and Strategies of British and German Biotechnology Companies. AGBO Report, LMU München.

Von Graevenitz, Georg; Wagner, Stefan; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hall, Bronwyn H.; Hoisl, Karin; Giuri, Paola; Gambardella, Alfonso (2007). The Strategic Use of Patents and Its Implications for Enterprise and Competition Policies, Report ENTR/05/82 for DG Enterprise, European Commission.

Reihen

Franke, Nikolaus; Harhoff, Dietmar; Henkel, Joachim; Häussler, Carolin (Hg.). Innovation und Entrepreneurship. Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler.