Patents have long been regarded as the 'gold standard' of intellectual property protection. In 'Little patents and big secrets: managing intellectual property', Anton and Yao (2004) call this traditional view into question by finding that firms keep their most important innovations secret. This...

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...

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...

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) constitute a disruption to the working environment of the inventive labor force of the acquired company. If inventors would respond with a decline of their patent productivity or departure from the firm this can be detrimental to the innovative process within the...

This paper analyzes the effect of injunctions on royalty negotiations for standard essential patents. We develop a model in which courts grant injunctions only when they have sufficient evidence that the prospective licensee is unwilling, in line with the way we understand Courts to operate in...

Ostdeutschland ist hinsichtlich seiner Innovationspotentiale kein monolithischer Block, sondern weist eine sehr differenzierte regionale Innovationsstruktur auf. Regionale Schwerpunkte innovativer Aktivitäten bilden neben Berlin und seinem unmittelbaren Umland vor allem sächsische und...

We explore the tail of patented invention value distributions by using value estimates obtained directly from patent holders. The paper focuses on those full-term German patents of the application year 1977 which were held by West German and U.S. residents. The most valuable patents in our data...

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...

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...