The benefits of innovations for firms strongly depend on their ability to develop complementary appropriability means, including intellectual property (IP) rights. This paper aims at assessing the interrelated effects of two types of IP rights, namely patents and trade marks, considering them in...

Academic institutions may register trademarks (TMs) to protect and exploit key intangible assets (e.g. reputation), to better market current and prospective initiatives, and to better appropriate the output of innovative activities. TM registration by academic institutions -- so far overlooked...

This working paper sums up the main findings of an OECD project aiming to provide an evidence basis for focusing efforts to improve the measurement of technological and non-technological forms of business innovation, with particular focus on the role of design. It reviews a broad range of novel...

This report presents original data and statistics on the innovation output of world top corporate R&D investors. Essentially descriptive in nature, it presents statistics about the technological profiles of companies, their trademark strategies for new products and services and about the extent...

Non-technological innovation is a major factor of competitiveness and productivity growth in the economy, notably in the service industries. However, the measurement of non-technological innovation and of innovation in the service industries is currently very poor, as traditional data sources...

This paper provides a direct measure of the density of patent thickets based on patent citations. We discuss the algorithm that generates the measure and present descriptive results validating it. Moreover, we identify technology areas particularly affected by patent thickets.

Post-grant validity challenges at patent offices rely on the private initiative of third parties to correct mistakes made by patent offices. We hypothesize that incentives to bring post-grant validity challenges are reduced when many firms benefit from revocation of a patent and when firms are...

Complex high technology industries are increasingly affected by patent thickets in which firms' patents mutually block the use of important technologies. Firms facing patent thickets patent intensively to acquire bargaining chips and use licensing to ensure freedom to operate. Such licensing...

We investigate incidence and evolution of patent thickets. Our empirical analysis is based on a theoretical model of patenting in complex and discrete technologies. The model captures how competition for patent portfolios and complementarity of patents affect patenting incentives. We show that...