Events

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

Patents play an important role in the market for technologies by facilitating the transfer of knowledge from innovators to practicing firms and enabling commercialization of innovative ideas. The timing of commercialization has been shown to be highly dependent on the exact timing of patent grant, when the major part of uncertainly over the scope of allowed claims is resolved (Gans, Hsu & Stern, 2008). But does the pendency of a patent application at the patent office also decrease the overall salability of a technology? In this paper, I study the effect of the USPTO's Prioritized Examination (Track One) Program on the likelihood that a patent will be commercialized. I compare applications that have undergone accelerated examination process under this program to applications with similar observable characteristics filed before the inception of the program. I find that prioritized applications have a higher propensity to be reassigned, suggesting that longer pendency at the patent office may reduce the commercialization of inventions.

Contact Person: Dr. Fabian Gaessler

Please visit the MIPLC website for details.

Moderation: Heiko Richter
Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competiton, room E 10

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

Recent highly publicized cases of scientific misconduct have raised concerns about its consequences for academic careers. Previous and anecdotal evidence suggests that these reach far beyond the fraudulent scientist and (his or) her career, affecting coauthors and institutions. Here we show that the negative effects of scientific misconduct spill over to uninvolved prior collaborators: compared to a control group, prior collaborators of misconducting scientists, who have no connection to the misconduct case, are cited 8 to 9% less often afterwards. We suggest that the mechanism underlying this phenomenon is stigmatization by mere association. The result suggests that scientific misconduct generates large indirect costs in the form of mistrust towards a wider range of research findings than was previously assumed. The far-reaching fallout of misconduct implies that potential whistleblowers might be disinclined to make their concerns public in order to protect their own reputation and career.

Contact Person: Dr. Fabian Gaessler

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

The European patent system consists of national offices and the European Patent Office (EPO), which cooperate on legal questions, while competing on fees and service quality. This competition could result in differentiation of the service offered by offices and in market segmentation, which might benefit patent applicants. To date there is little evidence on whether firms regularly choose between EPO and national offices, nor which parameters influence this choice. Such evidence is needed, if the functioning of the EPS as a whole is to be assessed. We provide the first analysis of competition between patent offices within the EPS. The paper provides a recursive model of the two principal choices made by patent applicants in the EPS: the selection of examining offices and of jurisdictions in which patent protection is obtained. We then derive and estimate instrumental variables models to establish the relative importance of fees, grant rates, examination duration and firm and patent characteristics in these choices. We identify sectors and types of firms that predominantly rely on the national offices or the EPO, but we also identify significant levels of switching, driven by variation in grant rates across offices and by fee changes as well as variation in the duration of examination. We discuss implications of our work for theoretical and empirical analyses of patent systems, and we discuss how the likely introduction of a Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court will affect the system and its governance mechanisms. 

Contact Person: Dr. Fabian Gaessler

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

Knowledge is substantial for modern economies and new knowledge a crucial driver for long-term regional growth. This holds especially true for radical innovations that are associated with high returns to investment and have the potential to initiate societal transformations. Recent contributions in Economic Geography emphasized that such radical innovations occur even more concentrated in space than incremental innovations. Thereby, to sustain growth, it is not only essential for regions to generate radical innovations (creation), but also to exploit arising potentials by quickly adopting radical innovations generated elsewhere (adoption). To date, the regional determinants shaping the creation and adoption of radical innovations remain largely unknown. In the present research, we take an interdisciplinary approach and suggest that macro psychological characteristics of the region affect the creation and adoption of radical innovations. To capture differences in macro psychological characteristics among regions, we aggregated Big Five personality trait data (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) from more than three Million US residents to the level of 381 Metropolitan Statistical Areas. We then conducted two studies to examine the extent to which aggregated personality scores can predict the creation and adoption of radical innovations across US cities. First, to examine creation, we linked personality data with USPTO patent data. We show that highly influential patents – i.e. radical innovations – more likely emerge in regions with an open, supposedly innovation-friendly culture. To control for endogeneity in our model specification, we also applied instrumental variable regressions using distance to sea as a reliable instrument for openness. Second, to examine adoption, we turned towards two illustrative examples of radical innovations - Uber and Airbnb - that are currently deeply reshaping conventional industries. To this end, we gathered annual data on the number of non-employer businesses in taxi and accommodation services. Within this data structure, we then exploited the foundation of Uber and Airbnb as a quasi-experimental setting. That is, we applied panel regressions with time fixed effects before and after the foundation of the respective company. Thereby, we show that the same psychological characteristics that facilitated the emergence of radical innovations also predicted how quickly Uber and Airbnb gain traction in US cities. Importantly, in all our model conditions macro psychological characteristics predicted unique variance above and beyond standard economic control variables. Feeding into the emerging literature on Geographical Psychology, we conclude that linking aggregated personality scores to economic outcomes promises valuable insights for both disciplines. For psychologists, the correlates of aggregate personality scores have implications for understanding the formation and expression of personality. For economists, hidden regional culture differences may serve as a crucial factor that is missing from conventional economic analyses and public policy strategies.

Contact Person: Dr. Fabian Gaessler

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

Boundary-spanners in networks have been shown to be in a privileged position to generate innovation outcomes, yet it is unclear how individuals seeking to leverage that position decide which contacts to rely on and when. This paper analyzes how individuals with dedicated boundary-spanning roles between industry and academia draw on their network resources to perform their jobs. Using an experiment-based setup we test how personality and cognition inform boundary-spanners’ decisions whether to rely on academic or industry contacts in their network in different situations. We predict that individual identification as an academic (industry) researcher will generally lead them to rely on academic (industry) contacts regardless of whether the input sought is of academic or industry nature, whereas individuals with high self-monitoring orientation would be more likely to match reliance on academic (industry) contacts to academic (industry) problems. The experimental design seeks to disentangle to what extent differences in network choices are rooted in individual cognitive ability to recall – i.e. “activate” – the full breadth of potential contacts or more deliberate behavioural preferences to “mobilize” certain contacts over others.

Contact Person: Felix Poege

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Marstallplatz 1 (Room E10)

If you plan on attending, we kindly request that you register by Wednesday, 24 January 2018 with Ms. Rosanna Würf (rosanna.wuerf(at)miplc.de).

For further information, please download the invitation.

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

This paper uses a rich panel data set of Indian manufacturing firms to analyze the effects of domestic and international acquisitions on various outcomes at target firm and product level. We apply recent methodological advances in the estimation of production functions together with information on prices and quantities to estimate physical productivity, markups, marginal costs and proxies for product quality.

Using a propensity score reweighting estimator, we find that acquisitions are associated with increases in quantities and markups and lower marginal costs on average. These changes are most pronounced if acquirers are located in technologically advanced countries. We also provide evidence that the quality of products increases while quality-adjusted prices fall upon acquisitions. Our results indicate that technology transfer from foreign acquirers to domestic firms, predicted by theories of multinational firms, can materialize in both cost- and quality-based gains and benefit both firms and consumers.

Contact Person: Felix Poege

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

The aim of this study is to analyze the effect of a decision weakening patents in light of the arguments made by stakeholders during the policymaking process. We show that the common belief that weaker patents lead to fewer innovations is wrong, while accounting for the heterogeneous patent-related strategies. Using a unique dataset on the entire population of French firms over 1995-2010 matched with their patents, we propose a cleaner test compared to previous literature using a measure closer to the concept of patenting propensity and a novel empirical approach. The arguments made by the Supreme Court and Amici in court documents show that the policy objectives are partially attained. While large firms in complex products industries reduce preemptive patenting, other firms use patents less as an appropriation mechanisms. Nevertheless, innovative activities remain high overall, due to the availability of alternative appropriation mechanisms and the spillovers allowed by weaker patents.

Contact Person: Dr. Fabian Gaessler