Efficiency in energy use is crucial for sustainable development. We use cointegration analyses to investigate the effect of electricity on energy productivity in Swedish industry 1930-1990. Electricity augmented energy productivity in those industrial branches that used electricity for multiple...

This paper provides an overview of internet file sharing networks and explores the relationship between technological, economic, and legal aspects of file sharing. I chronicle the evolution of content sharing technology since the 1990s, and examine the role of network architecture for a...

This article describes six common challenges of design, incentives, and governance that arise in establishing platform businesses. It also proposes solutions. It considers, for example, how to open a platform to decentralized innovation yet still earn a return; how to incorporate best-of-breed...

This study’s statistical analysis shows that patent quality and innovation in China deserve improvement, and an in-depth legal, management science, and economic analysis in the study shows that various patent-related policies and practices actually hamper patent quality and innovation in...

This perspective paper discusses challenges and risks of the information age, and the implications for the information and communication technologies that need to be built and operated. It addresses ethical and policy issues related with Big Data and how procedures for privacy-preserving data...

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...

The Italian and European regulatory framework for patents would benefit from further improvements in order to foster dynamic competition between Italian firms. At the national level the exclusive allocation of the right to patent inventions to universities, rather than to researchers, would...

We analyze the extent to which patent pools (agreements where patent holders agree to license their intellectual property as a package) could be used as an institution to facilitate technology transactions in biotechnology. Patent pools have been used with success in the consumer electronics and...

Software is a potentially excludable public good. It is possible, at some cost, to exclude non-paying users from its consumption by using copyright law or technological restraints. Licensing the software under proprietary license terms makes of it a private good, licensing it under the BSD does...

This paper explores the characteristics of 238 patents on 94 “inventions” contributed by major multinational innovators to the “Eco-Patent Commons”, which provides royalty-free access to third parties to patented climate change related innovations. By comparing the pledged patents to...