Publications

June 2003 (Revised May 2006)
Case

Cipla

By: Rohit Deshpande and Laura Winig

The head of Cipla, a $325-million-dollar Indian pharmaceutical company and seller of low-cost AIDS drugs to South Africa, must decide what to do about Cipla's future. With India poised to enforce international patents in only two years, much of Cipla's product line... View Details

Keywords: Trade; Price; Global Strategy; Health Care and Treatment; Patents; Leadership; Marketing Strategy; Health Industry; South Africa; India

19 Apr 2019
HBS Seminar

Nicholas Short, Harvard University

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

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

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

11 Sep 2014
HBS Seminar

Petra Moser, Stanford University

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

2008
Working Paper

Applicant and Examiner Citations in U.S. Patents: An Overview and Analysis

By: Juan Alcacer, Michelle Gittelman and Bhaven Sampat

Researchers studying innovation increasingly use indicators based on patent citations. However, it is well known that not all citations originate from applicants—patent examiners contribute to citations listed in issued patents—and that this could complicate... View Details

Keywords: Citations; Innovation and Invention; Patents; Research; United States

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

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

19 Jun 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Migrant Inventors and the Technological Advantage of Nations

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

21 Mar 2006
News

Commentary: Innovation and Its Discontents

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

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

May 2010 (Revised May 2013)
Case

C.K. Claridge, Inc.

By: James K. Sebenius

Sued for patent infringement, chemical manufacturer C.K. Claridge tries to design a settlement strategy taking into account a decision analysis of litigating v. negotiating. The plaintiffs are the patent holder and its sole licensee, who is also a CKC competitor. (This... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Patents; Lawsuits and Litigation; Negotiation Style; Negotiation Tactics; Chemical Industry