Research News

Science governance and funding seek to promote excellent science output by allocating resources to those projects, researchers and institutions from which outstanding results are expected. But the commonly used measures for scientific quality, such as the number of citations, do not take into account the potential of scientific results for technology transfer and commercialization.

The findings of the new study “Science Quality and the Value of Inventions” by Poege et al. imply that what is considered excellent within the science sector also leads to outstanding outcomes in the technological and commercial realm. Excellent scientific articles are referenced in substantially more patent documents than articles with lower scientific quality. Patents with references to often-cited scientific contributions are of much higher commercial value than patents referring to less-cited publications.

The analysis comprises references to scientific contributions from 4.8 million patent families of the European Patent Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and approximately 43 million scientific publications in the Web of Science from the year 1980 onwards.

Previously known was the fact that patents with references to scientific publications are substantially more valuable than patents without a direct science link. The new study contributes the insight that the quality of the scientific bases is of crucial importance. Patents with references to excellent scientific publications are particularly valuable, while this does not apply to patents with references to low quality scientific publications.

The results indicate that quality measures commonly used in science can serve as good criteria for a system of science funding which simultaneously provides a basis for societal benefit and technological progress.

Science Advances is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary open access journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and complements the journal Science, referred to as Science Magazine, which has been published since 1880.

To the publication in Science Advances

The authors: Felix Poege Dietmar Harhoff Fabian Gaessler Stefano H. Baruffaldi

Suggested citation:

Poege, Felix; Harhoff, Dietmar; Gaessler, Fabian; Baruffaldi, Stefano (2019). Science Quality and the Value of Inventions, Science Advances, 5 (12), eaay7323 (11 December 2019). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay7323

Artificial Intelligence (AI) changes - often invisibly - everyday life. In the field of IP law, however, AI raises new questions and challenges. A research project of the legal departments of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition led by Professor Reto M. Hilty and Professor Josef Drexl is investigating these issues.

The Research Group “Regulation of the Digital Economy” examines whether the existing IP system can fulfil its fundamental functions in the context of AI. Since a sound understanding of technology is indispensable for this task, the members of the group researched technical literature, conducted interviews with practitioners and organized a workshop with international AI researchers. The result is the present paper "Technical Aspects of Artificial Intelligence: An Understanding from an Intellectual Property Law Perspective".

The paper forms the basis for the group's ongoing legal research: How do current IP rights apply to AI? To what extent should the existing IP system be adjusted to adequately reflect social and economic changes due to AI?

With the European Patent Office (EPO), Federal Patent Court (BPatG), German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA), institutions of the new Unified Patent Court (UPC), the Patent Attorney Chamber, numerous lawyers and patent attorneys, patent services as well as many innovative Bavarian companies with large patent portfolios, Munich applies as the “European Patent Capital”.

The regional court Munich I is one of only 12 German courts responsible for so-called patent matters, in particular patent infringement cases. As a rule, the plaintiff has the choice of which court to call. The regional court Munich I is third in terms of the number of entries behind Düsseldorf and Mannheim. An important factor for the patent location Munich is the “Münchner Verfahren” (Munich Proceedings in Patent Litigation).

Ten years after its introduction, the procedure is now to be evaluated in order to gain knowledge for future improvements. The scientific evaluation is carried out by the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition as part of a research project.

As soon as the results are available, we will report.

For this purpose, a sample of more than 250,000 digitally performable projects from 188 countries with more than 2.5 million wage bill proposals of 65,010 freelancers from 177 countries was analyzed.

Female freelancers are willing to complete projects at a lower wage than their male competitors – which largely explains the observed gender wage gap. However, the analysis also shows that female freelancers are more likely than their male competitors to win the competition for contracts. Overall, this leads to a higher expected wage for female freelancers when making wage bill proposals.

One possible implication of the new Max Planck study by Frank Mueller-Langer, Affiliated Research Fellow at the Institute, and his co-author Estrella Gómez-Herrera, Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, is that online labor markets could help female workers to obtain a higher expected income.

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If you order Parmesan with your pasta in Buenos Aires, the waiter will most likely give you a friendly nod, but what he brings to your table is not likely to be recognized by lovers of Italian cuisine as “Parmigiano Reggiano”.

This will change with the new free-trade agreement between the European Union and the states of the Southern Common Market Mercosur, on which both sides reached an agreement in principle in late June.

The Mercado Común del Sur (Mercosur) constitutes South America's largest internal market. If ratified by the EU Member States and by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, the trade agreement would create a free-trade zone for approximately 770 million people. The goal of the deal is to open up the European Single Market for products from the Mercosur states, in return for abolishing customs and trade barriers for industrial goods from the EU. In addition, the EU has negotiated protection for 357 food and agricultural products like cheese, ham or wine that are protected by “geographical indications of origin” from copying or misuse in the EU and, soon, in Mercosur territory. So next time you order Parmesan in Argentina, you will have a better chance of actually getting a typical Parmiggiano.

The details of the agreement are not yet finalized. The protection of other kinds of intellectual property, for example, such as technological inventions, literary and musical works, or plant varieties, is also to be included the trade deal. It remains to be seen what the specific design will be. It is already clear, however, that Latin America has very diverse rules and standards of protection that apply to these intangible goods.

“The provisions in the patent, copyright, plant variety protection, or trademark laws vary in Latin America from country to country, regardless of which trade association they belong to”, explains Reto M. Hilty, Managing Director of the Munich Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition. “During the course of the 20th century the overwhelming majority of Latin American states did commit to the high standard of protection of the industrial nations by way of international, regional and bilateral agreements, so that they could in turn take part in world trade. This despite the fact that strong protection is not necessarily in their own interest, considering the current development stage of the Latin American economies”, observes the intellectual property law expert. Analyzing these protection mechanisms and studying their effects on the economic development of the region is the goal of the research initiative “Smart IP for Latin America”.

An eight-member team is set to research the significance and functioning of different standards of protection and the effect of regulations on the dynamics of competition.

The results of this research are relevant not only for the policy-making processes of the local legislative powers, but also for companies that are interested in investing in or expanding to this region. “In Brazil, for example, methods for manufacturing transgenic plants are patentable, but not in Argentina”, points out Juan Ignacio Correa, a legal scholar and native of Argentina. And yet the question of whether and how to protect innovations in the countries themselves is essential for a forward-looking agricultural and industrial policy.” Correa will head up the new “IP Observatory” at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Scheduled for launch in October of 2019, the observatory will coordinate Institute projects in the region.

In the four projects currently ongoing, legal scholars are studying the current status of IP protection in different Latin American countries. They have to consider historical, cultural, social, economic and political particularities in order to understand the effects of the applicable laws and identify misguided or lacking regulations.

In the area of patent law the researchers are putting together country reports detailing what can be protected under the national patent systems, what types of use are exempted from patent protection and what limitations to patent protection exist, which is significant particularly in the areas of pharmaceutics or plant protection, but also in other industries. “We collect this data from different sources: the local experts' answers to a detailed questionnaire, the sources of law and case-law, and our exchange with public agencies and interest groups in the respective country”, explains Matthias Lamping, Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Munich and an expert on Latin America.

“Experience shows that strong patent protection will hardly benefit a country that generates little innovation itself but primarily relies on importing products or technologies to meet its own population's demand, for example in medicines”, reports Reto M. Hilty. Furthermore, the revenues from such innovations as a rule fail to benefit the national economy, because the great majority of owners of national patents are located outside the country. While the scope for limiting national patent protection under international law is often taken advantage of, a positive effect may still not be felt due to other factors such as a lack of competition among generic drug manufacturers.

A further field of research treats copyright protection in this region that is rich in art and music. “Films and music from the region are currently popular as far away as Asia and enjoy wide dissemination. It is doubtful, however, that the protection of authors and the system of collective rights management through CMOs, in their current form and method of operation, will really lead to Latin American artists being able to draw income from them”, asserts Hilty. The focus in this research is on examining the functionality of the rights management system and developing recommendations for lawmakers.

In the area of technology transfer the research teams are studying the functioning and effectiveness of the existing legal framework in individual countries and analyzing ways in which the innovation potential in Latin America can be optimally realized. One important aspect of this project is international technology transfer, both between highly industrialized states and the countries of Latin America and between the latter countries themselves.

In the area of protection of geographical indications of origin it has become clear that the marketing potential of regional products is nowhere near being fully realized. While a few protection labels have been created for products like coffee providing legal protection for their indication of origin, this is not yet the case for a great number of foodstuffs. “For one thing, there is a lack of coherent marketing concepts to publicize the excellent quality of some of these products, whether they rely on geographical indications of origin or collective marks; in addition, there is not enough technological innovation in the agriculture sector that could be protected by patents or plant variety rights”, explains Juan Correa. In this project as well the legal researchers employ country-specific questionnaires to determine which legal frameworks are in place and how practitioners deal with them.

One thing the research projects all have in common is their comparative approach in empirically studying regulatory and factual conditions. In the view of the research team, the only way to draw up guidelines for future legal developments is by analyzing the current situation in all its political, social and economic facets and contexts. Among the important questions: How do incentives arise for market players? Are there specific regulatory approaches that can better realize the economic and cultural potential of the Latin American region?

In the initiative “Smart IP for Latin America”, therefore, it is important to engage in a dialogue with other disciplines such as economics, sociology or political science. “Only evidence-based research allows us to make sound recommendations for action that ultimately can be addressed to political decision-makers in Latin America”, explains Prof. Hilty. He clarifies that the point is precisely not to achieve and enforce the strongest possible protection of intellectual property - at least, not in countries where the business sector currently has no competitive advantages internationally and no relevant potential for creating them. Instead, the goal of this long-term initiative is to map out a system of protection that is optimally tailored to the specific conditions and needs of each individual society and economy in the region.

“Smart IP for Latin America” advocates the promotion of cooperation between the states with specific reference to IP law on different levels extending beyond academic discourse and including long-term support. Assistance for this initiative will be provided by an Advisory Committee composed of leading Latin American scholars.

A kick-off conference for the initiative took place in early 2018 in Santiago de Chile. It was organized in cooperation with the Chilean patent and trademark office, Instituto Nacional de Propiedad Industrial (INAPI), and was followed in the fall of 2018 by a workshop in Buenos Aires dedicated primarily to the patent project. The second annual conference took place in April 2019 in Cartagena, Colombia, in cooperation with Universidad de los Andes; at this meeting the precise orientation of the research projects already underway was defined. The Instituto Nacional de Defensa de la Competencia y de la Protección de la Propiedad Intelectual (INDECOPI), the competent institution for IP rights in Peru, has agreed to host the third annual conference in March 2020, tentatively in Lima.

Whether the final version of the free-trade agreement between the EU and the Mercosur states will be available by this date remains to be seen. In any case, following the basic agreement reached in June, both sides will work in tandem in the coming months to elaborate a final version of the deal, and this will then be submitted to the Council and the European Parliament for approval. Meanwhile, there is no doubt about the significance of the agreement: for the EU it will bring better business opportunities than are available today. And in the participating Latin American states, it will sow the seeds of unprecedented development - though harvesting them will only be possible with an increased awareness of which system of protection will yield the best results in each economy.

Research organizations and researchers studying science itself are reliant on bibliometric databases. These collect data on scientific publications, which allow to “measure” scientific output. The larger a database, the more scientific activity can be captured, but the more difficult it is to extract research data.

One of the largest bibliometric databases operated by the scientific publisher Elsevier is Scopus. The pybliometrics software, developed by Michael E. Rose, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute, in interdisciplinary collaboration with John R. Kitchin (Professor for Chemical Engineering at the Carnegie Mellon University), now allows researchers working with a Scopus license or Scopus Custom Data to use this database without major hurdles and automatically download data.

The software is written in Python, a programming language, which is becoming increasingly important among scientists. pybliometrics opens up new ways for users to get more quickly to the large and growing amounts of data they need.

At the same time, pybliometrics fosters the verifiability of scientific results, as it makes it transparent for everyone, according to which definitions research data were drawn. This facilitates the replication of research results, which is a hallmark of good scientific practice.

For the publication, see here.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are game-changing technologies that affect innovation and competition processes, and also the way research is conducted in the social (and other) sciences.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition are currently studying the utilization and impact of AI and ML in order to gauge their implications for society and economy. Moreover, our group actively uses Machine Learning techniques to conduct research. Furthermore, we contribute applied research results to adapt these methods to the needs of social scientists.

In order to support this work more effectively, the Department for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research at the Institute has established a Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Group consisting of researchers who actively analyze or apply AI and ML. The group acts as an observatory to monitor relevant developments in AI and ML, coordinates research on AI and ML, provides resources for colleagues, and teaches the new approaches to interested doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers.

For more information, please contact Michael E. Rose.