Publications

21 Jun 2021
News

A New Study Quantifies the Cost of Gender Bias: 6,500 Missed Opportunities for Women

July 2008 (Revised October 2008)
Case

Fidelity Investments' Charitable Gift Fund (A)

By: Robert C. Pozen

Deborah Pege, an attorney at Fidelity Investments, needs to decide whether Fidelity should attempt to patent business processes involved with its new charitable gift fund. The case explores the conditions that must be satisfied in order to receive a patent and raises... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Patents; Business Processes; Value

09 Jun 2008
Lessons from the Classroom

Monetizing IP: The Executive’s Challenge

According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, intellectual property in this country is worth more than $5 trillion—about twice the amount of the current federal budget. The question: Are companies taking advantage of this value? Not... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Video Game; Web Services

05 Nov 2008
Working Paper Summaries

The Litigation of Financial Innovations

Keywords: by Josh Lerner

Article

Intermediary Functions and the Market for Innovation in Meiji and Taisho Japan

By: Tom Nicholas and Hiroshi Shimizu

Japan experienced a transformational phase of technological development during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We argue that an important, but so far neglected, factor was a developing market for innovation and a patent attorney system that was... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Patents; Innovation and Invention; Japan

March 2022
Article

Winner Takes All? Tech Clusters, Population Centers, and the Spatial Transformation of U.S. Invention

By: Brad Chattergoon and William R. Kerr

U.S. invention has become increasingly concentrated around major tech centers since the 1970s, with implications for how much cities across the country share in concomitant local benefits. Is invention becoming a winner-takes-all race? We explore the rising spatial... View Details

Keywords: Clusters; Invention; Agglomeration; Artificial Intelligence; Innovation and Invention; Patents; Applications and Software; Industry Clusters; AI and Machine Learning

July 2008 (Revised August 2008)
Supplement

Fidelity Investments' Charitable Gift Fund (B)

By: Robert C. Pozen

The (B) case informs students of Fidelity's decision about pursuing a business process patent for its charitable gift fund and describes subsequent litigation and lawsuits filed by other companies over business process patent issues. View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Patents; Lawsuits and Litigation; Business Processes

Article

Invention and Agglomeration in the Bay Area: Not Just ICT

By: Chris Forman, Avi Goldfarb and Shane Greenstein

We document that the Bay Area rose from 4% of all successful US patent applications in 1976 to 16% in 2008. This is partly driven by the increase in the prevalence of information and communication technology; however, even for patents unrelated to information and... View Details

Keywords: Agglomeration; Information Technology; Patents; San Francisco

Purchase

24 Apr 2019
HBS Seminar

Dimitris Papanikolaou, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

22 Dec 2015
First Look

December 22, 2015

analysis suggests a need for caution: while information facilitates transactions, it also facilitates discrimination. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50258 Financial Patent Quality: Finance View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

Article

Why Schumpeter Was Right: Innovation, Market Power and Creative Destruction in 1920s America

By: Tom Nicholas

Are firms with strong market positions powerful engines of technological progress? Joseph Schumpeter thought so, but his hypothesis has proved difficult to verify empirically. This article highlights Schumpeterian market-power and creative-destruction effects in a... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Power and Influence; Emerging Markets; Rank and Position; Status and Position; Capital Markets; Capital Structure; Information Technology; Patents; Creativity; Economic Systems; Development Economics; United States

November 2010
Article

The Litigation of Financial Innovations

By: Josh Lerner

This paper examines the litigation of patents relating to financial products and services. I show that these grants are being litigated at a rate 27 to 39 times greater than that of patents as a whole. The patents being litigated are disproportionately those issued to... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Lawsuits and Litigation; Finance

26 Aug 2012
News

Apple-Samsung Case Shows Smartphone as Legal Magnet

February 2008 (Revised May 2011)
Case

The Travails of Rubber: Goodyear or Badyear?

By: Tom Nicholas and Andrew Ferguson

Explores the reason why Charles Goodyear, inventor of rubber vulcanization, was unable to profit from his discovery despite securing international property rights over his invention through a patent in 1844. Considers the utility of patents as an incentive for... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Entrepreneurship; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Innovation and Invention; Patents; Motivation and Incentives; Commercialization

Educators

Purchase

2024
Working Paper

The Value of AI Innovations

By: Wilbur Xinyuan Chen, Terrence Tianshuo Shi and Suraj Srinivasan

We study the value of AI innovations as it diffuses across general and application sectors, using the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) AI patent dataset. Investors value these innovations more than others, as AI patents exhibit a 9% value premium,... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Valuation; Technological Innovation; Open Source Distribution; Patents; Policy; Knowledge Sharing; Technology Industry

19 Jun 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Migrant Inventors and the Technological Advantage of Nations

Keywords: by Dany Bahar, Prithwiraj Choudhury, and Hillel Rapoport

February 2002 (Revised March 2002)
Case

India's Intellectual Property Rights Regime and the Pharmaceutical Industry

In 1970, the Indian government significantly revised its patent law, Patents and Design Act of 1911. The 1911 act was enacted when India was a colony of Great Britain, and it was controversial because it led to the total dominance of India's pharmaceutical market by... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Pharmaceutical Industry; Great Britain; India