This paper uses data on transactions in the pharmaceutical industry to examine the demand-side of technology outsourcing. By integrating a transaction-cost economics perspective with the analysis of internal Ramp;D capabilities, we find that firms with relatively more cospecialized complementary...

We examine the interrelationships between firms' efforts to leverage different types of intellectual property (IP) rights. While prior research has tended to view different forms of intellectual property as substitutes, we argue that they can also be viewed as complements. We motivate this...

Attention has increasingly been shifted towards the long-run perspective on technological innovation, which suggests that progress comes in waves, each one originated by a major breakthrough or general purpose technology (GPT). This paper seeks to assess whether nanotechnology is likely to...

The recent surge in U.S. patenting and expansion of patentable subject matter has increased patent office backlogs and raised concerns that in some cases patents of insufficient quality or with inadequate search of prior art are being issued. At the same time patent litigation and its costs are...

This article assesses the impact in the US of adopting a patent post-grant review (PGR) procedure similar to one provided in the America Invents Act (AIA) of 2011. We employ novel methods for matching US patents to their European counterparts to find that opposition rates are about three times...

The recent surge in U.S. patenting and expansion of patentable subject matter has increased patent office backlogs and raised concerns that in some cases patents of insufficient quality or with inadequate search of prior art are being issued. At the same time patent litigation and its costs are...

We report the results of the first comparative study of the determinants and effects of patent oppositions in Europe and of re-examinations on corresponding patents issued in the United States. The analysis is based on a dataset consisting of matched EPO and US patents. Our analysis focuses on...