Europe is not delivering on its commitment under the Lisbon agenda to increase its R&D-to-GDP ratio to 3% by 2010. But does the European Commission's practice of benchmarking each and every member state against the headline 3% figure make sense? R&D intensity is influenced by industrial...

This paper investigates whether firms' innovation strategies affect their patenting behavior, as measured by both the probability of having a patent portfolio and the number of active patents held. Three main dimensions of an innovation strategy are taken into account: the relative importance of...

The 'entrepreneurial university' has become commonplace in debates about new ways of knowledge production and the changing relationships between university, industry and government. A rich literature has developed exploring outputs of such activity, most notably 'patenting', 'licensing', and...

Patent-based indicators at the country level are frequently used to assess countries' innovation performances or efforts. Yet they are often said to reflect the propensity to patent rather than actual research productivity. The authors of this article argue that patent-based indicators can...

For more than 40 years, governments and professional associations have acted, voted or lobbied against the implementation of the Community Patent (COMPAT, officially called the EU Patent). The econometric results and simulations presented in this paper suggest that, thanks to its attractiveness...

This paper puts forward a sustainable fee structure for the EU Patent (COMPAT). The proposal includes pre-grant and post-grant fees and illustrates the differences between Euro-direct applications and PCT applications. The break-even analysis shows that the COMPAT would make the European patent...