Trademarks are often supposed to reduce substitutability and imitability of product innovations. Using German CIS data for 2010, we provide empirical evidence that trademarking firms assess easy product substitutability as less characteristic for their competitive environment. This is...

This study shows for a large sample of R&D-active manufacturing firms that collaborative R&D has a positive effect on firms' patenting in terms of both quantity and quality. When distinguishing between alliances that aim at joint creation of new knowledge and alliances that aim at exchange of...

Open standard-setting organizations (SSOs) have emerged as important coordination and diffusion mechanism for information and communication technologies. Open standards are developed non-discriminatorily and licensed to anybody at reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. Little is known about...

This paper analyses whether strategic motives for patenting influence the characteristics of companies' patent portfolios. We use the number of citations and oppositions to represent these characteristics. The investigation is based on survey and patent data from German companies. We find clear...

The knowledge produced by academic scientists has been identified as a potential key driver of technological progress. Recent policies in Europe aim at increasing commercially orientated activities in academe. Based on a sample of German scientists across all fields of science we investigate the...

This paper analyses whether strategic motives for patenting influence the characteristics of companies' patent portfolios. We use the number of citations and oppositions to represent these characteristics. The investigation is based on survey and patent data from German companies. We find clear...

The increasing commercialization of university discoveries has initiated a controversy on the impacts for future scientific research. It has been argued that an increasing orientation towards commercialization may have a negative impact on more fundamental research efforts in science. Several...

While often presumed in academic literature and policy discussions there is little empirical evidence showing that academic patents protect more basic inventions than corporate patents. This study provides new evidence on the basicness of academic patents using German professor patents linked to...

Against the background of the so-called European paradox, i.e. the conjecture that EU countries lack the capability to transfer science into commercial innovations, knowledge transfer from academia to industry has been a central issue in policy debates recently. Based on a sample of German...

Technological change is often hypothesized as one of the main drivers of merger activities. This paper analyzes the role of technology in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) at the firm level. Based on a newly created data set that combines financial information and patent data for public firms in...