This paper investigates the effects of outsourcing of prior art search on the efficiency of patent examination, using a large scale Japanese patent examination data. Outsourcing may increase examination quality by expanding the scope of prior art search, while it may have a negative effect if...

We investigate how a deferred patent examination system promotes ex-ante screening of patent applications, which reduces both the number of granted patents and the use of economic resources for examinations, without reducing the return from R&D. Based on a real option theory, we develop a model...

This paper presents an exploratory study on the characteristics of inventive activities as captured on the basis of the analysis of a data-set of R&D awards. Our data source is the "R&D 100 Awards" competition organized by the journal Research and Development. Since 1963, the magazine (which at...

The objective of this paper is to assess whether large firms' organizational competencies affect their innovation performances. About 40 organizational sub-competencies are defined and measured through an original survey questionnaire answered by 148 large firms in Belgium. The sub-competencies...

We present a framework to evaluate the impact of digital music distribution. We set up a representative model that enables the comparative static analysis. We then interpret two empirical observations about the music industry, the sales decline and the price constancy, and fit the model to these...

This paper examines the structure and the evolution of the patents declared as essential for three major technical standards in information technology (MPEG2, DVD and W-CDMA). These standards have many essential patents, which are owned by many firms with different interests. Many patents have...

We provide an economic analysis of two types of research exemptions: (1) experimentation and research on the patented subject matter, and (2) academic (or non-commercial) research with the patented invention. We find that exemption for research on improving or inventing-around the subject matter...

File sharing systems such as Napster and KaZaA are accused by the recording industry of causing declines in sales of music CDs, and recently users of these systems are under lawsuit attack. However, there is not sufficient evidence that file sharing systems are responsible for the recent decline...

Identifying whether an exogenous factor affects R&D from a demand side or from a supply side is an important issue. This paper, first, theoretically shows that a favorable change in either side can reduce the R&D productivity in equilibrium, so that the reduced form estimation cannot provide a...

The number of requests for patent examination showed a significant increase of 83% from 1997 to 2007 in Japan, while the number of patent applications increased by only 1%. This paper aims at theoretically and empirically analyzing the causes of recent "explosion" of examination requests,...