We study the causal impact of invalidating marginally valid patents during post-grant opposition at the European Patent Office on affected inventors' subsequent patenting. We exploit exogenous variation in invalidation by leveraging the participation of a patent's original examiner in the...

We document the occurrence of process claims in granted U.S. patents over the last century. Using novel data on the type of independent patent claims, we show an increase in the annual share of process claims of about 25 percentage points (from below 10% in 1920). This rise in process intensity...

In Barcelona, the European Union set ambitious targets for the European Research Area, calling for research expenditures equivalent to 3 % of Europe’s GDP by 2010. This paper analyses the implications of these targets, assesses the influence of the member states, and examines the role of the...

Taking technological differences between firms as given, we show that the technologically advanced firm has a stronger incentive for technology licensing under a decentralized unionization structure than with centralized wage setting. Furthermore, We show that, in presence of licensing, the...

How does antitrust enforcement against patent-based monopolies affect innovation? I address this question by empirically studying the US antitrust case against Xerox, the monopolist in the market for plain-paper copiers. In 1975, Xerox was ordered to license all its copier-technology patents in...

Biotechnologies are a priority area of development due to the scope of global challenges and social problems they help to resolve. There is demand for updated information about the the current state of research and challenges faced. This paper discusses the potential of patent analysis and...

The importance of knowledge spillovers for achieving innovation and economic growth is widely recognized. It is not straightforward which type of spillovers is most effective: intra-sectoral spillovers or inter-sectoral spillovers. We investigate this controversy using a model of regional...

We analyze the impact of obsolescence of economic inventions by incorporating maintenance costsin the endogenous growth model of expanding product varieties. This contrasts with the existingliterature, which ignores maintenance costs and uses the model of quality improvements todescribe...

Innovation and technological change are central to the quest for regional development. In the globally-connected knowledge-driven economy, the relevance of agglomeration forces that rely on proximity continues to increase, paradoxically despite declining real costs of information, communication...

Finding proper policy instruments to promote productivity growth features prominently on the Lisbon agenda and is central in many national as well as European policy debates. In view of the increased mobility of high-skilled workers in Europe, ongoing globalization and increased interregional...