Events

Two years after the Florence SEP Seminar, the European University Institute (EUI) and the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition invite to their scientific conference on “IP, Competition and Innovation” to be held in Florence at the EUI Campus on 3 – 4 October 2024.

The relationship between intellectual property (IP) rights and competition law is complex. There is broad high-level consensus that IP laws and competition law, each with its specific legal instruments, share the common objective of enhancing consumer welfare and promoting innovation and are, as such, complementary. Though straightforward in theory, the extent to and how innovation considerations inform the competition law enforcement in general, and in IP-related cases in particular, pose significant challenges. Moreover, technological and societal developments are changing innovation processes and market competition. These changes, in turn, impact the role and use of IP rights in the market. Additionally, differences in how IP rights are treated under competition law across jurisdictions can be the source of geopolitical tensions, given the pivotal role that IP protection has acquired in international trade and the extraterritorial reach of competition laws.

Key topics at the intersection of IP and competition emerge across several innovative industries. As one of the most R&D-intensive industries, IP-related competition cases have been most prominent in the pharmaceutical sector. While competition authorities have focused much on reverse-payment settlements in the past years, the potential anticompetitive nature of other patenting and licensing strategies is becoming the focus of interest. Likewise, competition law enforcers are increasingly testing new innovation-related theories of harm in their assessment of pharmaceutical mergers. In the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, issues concerning licensing and enforcing standard essential patents (SEPs) have been hotly debated for years. At the same time, as the Internet of Things advances, novel questions arise from integrating ICT technologies in more traditional industries. Finally, competition law challenges to copyright exclusivity are expanding beyond the area of collective management organisations into digital markets. In this context, recent discussions revolve around restrictions on open-source licensing by dominant IP rightsholders and on interoperability obligations of digital platforms.

Policy developments in Europe are also reshaping the interplay of IP rights and competition law. Since April 2023, a proposal for a Regulation on SEPs, representing the most significant change in the standardisation context since the SDOs’ adoption of IPR policies in the early 1990s, is undergoing the legislative process. Moreover, starting in June 2023, the Unitary Patent system finally provides a single patent right and a court system for 17 EU Member States. The Unified Patent Court can significantly contribute to the EU competition law jurisprudence by hearing defences related to dominance abuses in patent infringement actions and making preliminary references to the CJEU.

Furthermore, the Commission is working to introduce by 2025 new guidelines on exclusionary abuses, including IP-related practices. In parallel, the European Commission has just launched the process for reforming the Block Exemption Regulation on Technology Transfer Agreements, which expires in 2026. This regulation and the accompanying Guidelines are the primary reference source of the EU policy on IP licensing and serve as a role model for other jurisdictions.

Against this background, the Florence Conference on IP, Competition and Innovation welcomes unpublished papers from lawyers and economists both on cross-cutting and sector-specific IP and competition policy issues. In particular, we invite theoretical and empirical contributions on the following topics:
 

• IP and competition within innovation networks and ecosystems
• IP as an economic competitiveness index at the micro and macro levels
• IP valuation and royalty rate calculation
• Market definition and market power analysis in IP-related cases
• The role of competition law and IP in R&D agreements
• Bilateral and multilateral IP licensing, including the reform of EU Block-Exemption Regulation for Technology Transfer Agreements
• The role of IP and innovation in merger control cases
• IP, competition and innovation in digital markets, including challenges related to artificial intelligence
• IP enforcement, alternative dispute resolution and competition law defences
• Sector-specific IP and competition law issues (e.g., pharmaceuticals, standards and SEPs, open-source software)

Program

The goal of the Florence Conference on IP, Competition and Innovation is to stimulate an in-depth discussion of selected academic papers with particular emphasis on the policy impact of the research findings. Each paper will be allocated 30 minutes, divided between 15 minutes for the author’s presentation and the rest for discussion by a pre-assigned fellow participant and questions from invited attendees.

Keynote Speaker

The Florence Conference on IP, Competition and Innovation will feature a keynote lecture by Herbert Hovenkamp (University of Pennsylvania).

Submission

Submission until 2 June 2024.
Acceptance notifications sent by the end of June 2024. The final paper versions of the selected submissions are due by 15 September 2024.

Best Junior Paper Awards

Two Best Junior Paper Awards will be given for the best contribution among those submitted by authors not older than 35 years, respectively in the fields of law and of economics. Scholars will be required to provide proof of their date of birth to be eligible for this award. All co-authors of joint papers must meet the age criteria.

Scientific Committee

• Svend Albaek | EUI
• Marco Botta | EUI
• Giacomo Calzolari | EUI
• Beatriz Conde Gallego | Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
• Josef Drexl | Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
• Lapo Filistrucchi | University of Florence
• Niccolò Innocenti | University of Florence
• Pier Luigi Parcu | EUI
• Nicolas Petit | EUI
• Anna Pisarkiewicz | EUI 
• Maria Alessandra Rossi | University of Chieti Pescara – EUI 
• Giovanni Sartor | EUI TBC

EUI TBC Organizing Committee

• Niccolò Galli | EUI 
• Leonardo Mazzoni | EUI

Costs

The cost of participating in the conference is € 150, including an evening social event, meals and refreshments at the venue. Participants bear their travel and accommodation costs. For information about accommodation facilities and logistics issues, please write to Marsida Nence at digital.society(at)eui.eu.

Venue

Villa Schifanoia, European University Institute, Via Giovanni Boccaccio 121, Florence, Italy (on Google Maps)

Contact

For further information about submissions and the programme, please contact niccolo.galli(at)eui.eu.

Registration

Please register online: Registration

While the state of technology at country level has been compared by using patent information, the difference of innovation process, how the inventions are converted into actual products and services, are under investigated. Historically, the relationship between technology and the market has been analyzed by using technology-industry concordance matrix, but the granularity of market information is fined by industrial classification system. In this study, we use both patent and web contents information to estimate key word level detail innovation conversion model, and compare those across three countries, China, Japan and the United States. First, we apply dual attention model to extract product/service information out of web page information (Motohashi and Zhu, 2023). Then, using the textual information of both patent abstracts and product/service keywords, we develop the machine learning model to predict product/service from some particular type of technology. Finally, we compare the actual product/service vector and predicted product/service vector by cosine similarity to see the innovation transformation process is different by countries.

Contact person: Daehyun Kim

Subscription to the invitation mailing list and more information on the seminar page.

When firms engage in lobbying, the primary outcome they seek is beneficial regulatory change. However, prior literature suggests that there may also be a secondary outcome to lobbying—the leakage of knowledge to competitors. In this paper, I explore the leakage of technological knowledge when firms lobby for technology-related regulations and the strategic response of competitors to the leakage. Based on field interviews and existing studies, I hypothesize that when a firm is involved in lobbying, competitors are able to learn about the lobbying firm’s technologies through the lobbyists and policies for which the firm advocates. In addition, I abductively explore whether leakage is more likely with external or internal lobbyists. I build a unique dataset on U.S. firms that engaged in lobbying on technology policy and the patents applied for by those firms. I utilize an embedding approach on the text of patents to directly detect knowledge leakage in the strategic response of competitors. The results show that when a firm increase lobbying efforts, its patents are associated with a greater number of imitative patents generated by competitors. Moreover, post-hoc analyses suggest that internal lobbying is closely linked to leakage because firm employees posses and share detailed information, but there is no evidence that external lobbyists opportunistically leak. Overall, this paper documents a technological risk inherent to coordinating a firm’s innovation activity with its political strategy.

Contact person: Daehyun Kim

Subscription to the invitation mailing list and more information on the  seminar page.

Although researchers in Pasteur’s Quadrant are thought to be more productive, we lack comprehensive data on who they are, where they work, and how they impact both science and technology. We provide a new and publicly-available dataset that links the careers of scientists and U.S. inventors, providing large sample evidence that those working in “Pasteur’s Quadrant” produce more novel and highly cited science and technology. We describe the crosswalk of these individuals’ fields of science and classes of technology, institutional and organizational affiliations, consistently higher geographic concentration than pure scientists or pure inventors, and shift towards wealthy and western counties within the U.S..

Contact person: Marina Chugunova

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Commercialization is a crucial phase in the innovation process and its associated costs significantly influence R&D decisions. Yet our understanding of how commercialization costs impact various stages of innovation remains underdeveloped. In this study, I investigate the effects of commercialization costs on early and late stages of the innovation process in a quasi-experimental setting. Specifically, I leverage sudden policy shifts in the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that increased commercialization costs for drugs in certain therapeutic areas. Employing a difference-in-differences methodology, I trace the impacts of these elevated costs on discovery and clinical trial advancement of 3,357 drug candidates between 1997 and 2015. My research places emphasis on the contrasting roles that startups and established firms have in innovation. My findings reveal that while commercialization costs diminish the late-stage efforts in commercializing innovations, especially by established firms, they stimulate an environment conducive to early-stage entrepreneurial drug discovery efforts. Furthermore, I find that the disruption that commercialization costs create in markets for technology drives these opposite findings: new discoveries remain without buyers in technology markets, failing to complete their development process as commercialized products.

Contact person: Elisabeth Hofmeister

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Throughout history, technological advancements have consistently challenged existing legal frameworks, necessitating reactive adaptations to protect emerging human capabilities, liberties, values, interests, and norms. Yet, this dynamic has unfolded largely without a deliberate effort to theorize the law-technology nexus.

In our current era, characterized by the rapid proliferation of data-driven technologies (DDT), the need for a theoretical elucidation and reevaluation of the law-technology interplay has become increasingly pressing. This lecture addresses the critical demand for a new theoretical framework to comprehend the intersection of law and DDT, examining the adequacy of classical legal theories in grappling with DDT’s novel nature and its profound societal impact.

We advocate for a critical reevaluation of classical legal theories, proposing the development of a robust, comprehensive theoretical framework that captures the law-technology relationship within data-centric environments. The lecture will underscore the necessity of this jurisprudential evolution, highlighting the insufficiency of traditional legal paradigms to address the complex consequences and transformative potential of DDT. Additionally, we will delve into the significant implications of the information revolution and data science for legal normativity.

This lecture provides a timely and innovative examination of the theoretical and normative foundations required to navigate the confluence of law and cutting-edge data-driven technologies. It serves as a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue and insights crucial for shaping policy, practice, and future research in this rapidly evolving domain.

Joseph E. David is a Full Professor of Law at Sapir Academic College in Israel. He is the author of The State Rabbinate: Election, Separation and Freedom of Expression (2000), The Family and the Political: On Belonging and Responsibility in a Liberal Society (2012), Toleration within Judaism (2013), Jurisprudence and Theology in Late Ancient and Medieval Jewish Thought (2014) and Kinship, Law and Politics- An Anatomy of Belonging (2019). He edited The State of Israel: Between Judaism and Democracy (2000), Questioning Dignity: Human Dignity as Supreme Modern Value (2006), Nomos and Narrative for the Hebrew Reader (2012), The Gift of the Land and the Fate of the Canaanites in Jewish Thought (2014), and Strengthening Human Rights Protections in Geneva, Israel, the West Bank and Beyond (2021). Joseph has held academic positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, New York University, University of Oxford, Yale University, Emory University, Hebrew University, and Reichman University.

Based on comparative research on recent AI regulation and Law between China and EU, especially “The Interim Administrative Measures on Generative AI Services” in China and the “EU Artificial Intelligence Act”, also based on recent AI case studies related to intellectual property, and ethics issues (including fairness and safety). This paper put forward some suggestions about restrictions and supplemental regulations etc. in the related laws (including patent law, copyright law). And gives considerations for promoting the sustainable development of AI industry by promoting ethical and sustainable innovation.

Prof. Dr. Xiang YU is a Member of Academia Europaea, Director of Sino-European Institute for Intellectual Property of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Vice President of Hubei Normal University.

Contact person: Daehyun Kim

Subscription to the invitation mailing list and more information on the seminar page.

We study the welfare implications of the rise of common ownership in the United States from 1995 to 2021. We build a general equilibrium model with a hedonic demand system in which firms compete in a network game of oligopoly. Firms are connected through two large networks: the first reflects ownership overlap, the second product market rivalry. In our model, common ownership of competing firms induces unilateral incentives to soften competition and the magnitude of the common ownership effect depends on how much the two networks overlap. We estimate our model for the universe of U.S. public corporations using a combination of firm financials, investor holdings, and text-based product similarity data. We perform counterfactual calculations to evaluate how the efficiency and the distributional impact of common ownership have evolved over time. According to our estimates the welfare cost of common ownership, measured as the ratio of deadweight loss to total surplus, has increased about ninefold between 1995 and 2021. Under various corporate governance models the deadweight loss of common ownership ranges between 3.5% and 13.2% of total surplus in 2021. The rise of common ownership has also resulted in a significant reallocation of surplus from consumers to producers.

Contact person: Marina Chugunova

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We examine how reviewer–applicant social ties (department and university affiliation, co-author/co-applicant relationships, research field similarity) influence reviewer evaluations, based on Japanese research grant administrative data (2005–2016). All relationships between social ties and scores are positively correlated, even after accounting for unobservable applicant characteristics and proposal quality. Regarding bias and information advantage effects, upward deviation from department match negatively correlates with applicants’ future research outputs, implying bias. Upward deviation from research field similarity or university match positively correlates with future productivity, indicating that information advantage predicts applicants’ future productivity. 

Contact person: Marina Chugunova

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The international mobility of researchers has been central to the agenda of policy-makers for several decades. Despite the growing presence of mobility grants within public funding agencies' portfolios, empirical evidence on their effects remains scant. In this paper, we contribute to the literature by studying the Marie Curie fellowships, the flagship program of the EU, providing competitive grants to early-stage researchers to spend a research period abroad. Based on data for the universe of applicants to the Seventh Framework Programme (2007-2013), we exploit the discontinuity in grant assignment to uncover causal effects on individual researchers. Results show that grants are indeed conducive to higher chances of experiencing mobility towards the scientists' country of choice. Conversely, we do not find systematic evidence that grants on average lead to increases in publication quantity or quality, nor improved career progression. Finally, we document interesting heterogeneous effects: grants supporting extra-European mobility, as opposed to those supporting mobility within Europe, generally yield more positive effects across most outcomes. This suggests that grants are most effective when targeting mobility flows subject to larger frictions. (co-authors: Stefano Baruffaldi, Yevgeniya Shevtsova)

Contact person: David Heller

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