What happens when a contract, the Patent Act, and the Bayh-Dole Act purport to give ownership in the same patent to the government, a university, and a university researcher, all at the same time? The US Supreme Court recently answered this question in Stanford Univ. v Roche Molecular Sys.,...

On October 11, 2011, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, issued an opinion affirming a decision of the US International Trade Commission (ITC) barring importation of a product made in China by a Chinese company using trade secrets...

Personalized medicine defines an individualized healthcare system based on patients’ unique characteristics, such as genetic information. It aims to reduce the predictable risk of disease and improve response to treatment by applying a specific therapy. This particular field brings along the...

We analyze the development of the German knowledge base measured by co-classifications of patents by German inventors and relate this technological development to changes in the structure of the underlying inventor networks. Our central hypothesis states that technologies which become more...

Novel early stage ideas face uncertainty on the expertise needed to elaborate them, which creates a need to circulate them widely to find a match. Yet as information is not excludable, shared ideas may be stolen, reducing incentives to innovate. Still, in idea-rich environments inventors may...