Publications

June 2022
Article

The Use and Misuse of Patent Data: Issues for Finance and Beyond

By: Josh Lerner and Amit Seru

Patents and citations are powerful tools for understanding innovation increasingly used in financial economics (and management research more broadly). Biases may result, however, from the interactions between the truncation of patents and citations and the changing... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Analytics and Data Science; Corporate Finance; Research

Summer 2020
Article

Tech Clusters

By: William R. Kerr and Frederic Robert-Nicoud

Tech clusters like Silicon Valley play a central role for modern innovation, business competitiveness, and economic performance. This paper reviews what constitutes a tech cluster, how they function internally, and the degree to which policy makers can purposefully... View Details

Keywords: Clusters; Agglomeration; Innovation; Industry Clusters; Innovation and Invention; Entrepreneurship; Patents

2018
Working Paper

Some Facts of High-Tech Patenting

By: Michael Webb, Nick Short, Nicholas Bloom and Josh Lerner

Patenting in software, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence has grown rapidly in recent years. Such patents are acquired primarily by large U.S. technology firms such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, and HP, as well as by Japanese multinationals such as Sony, Canon,... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Applications and Software; Technological Innovation; United States

SSRN

2018
Working Paper

Information Provision and Innovation: Natural Experiment of Herbal Patent Prior Art Adoption at the United States and European Patent Offices

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Tarun Khanna

We exploit a natural experiment to study how codifying information about prior innovation affects subsequent innovation. A codified database of traditional Indian herbal formulations was adopted by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Ethnicity; Health Care and Treatment; Pharmaceutical Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; China; India

January 2011
Teaching Note

Ganeden Biotech, Inc. (TN)

By: Robert C. Pozen, Dale Alan Winger and Matthew Kenneth Ahlers

Teaching Note for 310073. View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Decisions; Investment; Intellectual Property; Strategy; Interests; Health Industry

Purchase

01 Sep 2009
First Look

First Look: September 1

sought to bring under its banner key intellectual property (IP) from the nascent field of stem cell technology. As such, iZumi would need to acquire the rights to several... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

20 Jan 2010
First Look

First Look: Jan. 20

Working PapersContracting in the Self-reporting Economy (revised) Authors:Romana L. Autrey and Richard Sansing Abstract This paper examines the effect of accounting on the use of intellectual property. We analyze the licensing of View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

08 Jul 2014
First Look

First Look: July 8

technical knowledge about a product or process. When state-sanctioned intellectual property (IP) rights are ineffective or costly to enforce, modularity can be used to hide... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

19 Jun 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Migrant Inventors and the Technological Advantage of Nations

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

2022
Working Paper

Innovation on Wings: Nonstop Flights and Firm Innovation in the Global Context

By: Dany Bahar, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Do Yoon Kim and Wesley W. Koo

We study whether, when, and how better connectivity through nonstop flights leads to positive innovation outcomes for firms in the global context. Using unique data of all flights emanating from 5,015 airports around the globe from 2005 to 2015 and exploiting a... View Details

Keywords: Nonstop Flights; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Patents; Research and Development; Air Transportation Industry

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

28 Nov 2016
Research & Ideas

Challenging the Belief that Liability Laws Kill Medical Device Innovation

Doctors are afraid of getting sued. According to some accounts, 75 percent of them perform more tests and procedures than necessary to avoid potential lawsuits over medical malpractice. The phenomenon of “defensive medicine” has been examined exhaustively by... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Medical Devices & Supplies

March 2011
Article

To Join or Not to Join: Examining Patent Pool Participation and Rent Sharing Rules

By: Josh Lerner and Anne Layne-Farrar

In recognition that participation in modern patent pools is voluntary, we present empirical evidence on participation rates and the factors that drive the decision to join a pool, including the profit sharing rules adopted by the pool's founders. In most participation... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Alliances; Vertical Integration; Standards

1996
Chapter

Trends in University Patenting 1965-1992

By: Rebecca M. Henderson, Adam Jaffe and Manuel Trajtenberg

Keywords: History; Patents; Higher Education; Trends; Non-Governmental Organizations; Education Industry

January 1993 (Revised April 1995)
Case

Fog of Business, The

In the mid-1980s, the Holland Sweetener Co. (HSC) was facing the decision whether to enter the European and Canadian aspartame markets, following the ending of NutraSweet's patents there. A major question facing HSC was whether NutraSweet would respond to entry in an... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Patents; Competition; Market Entry and Exit; Food and Beverage Industry; Canada; United States; Europe

Educators

Purchase

Summer 2017
Article

Copyright Enforcement: Evidence from Two Field Experiments

By: Hong Luo and Julie Holland Mortimer

Effective dispute resolution is important for reducing private and social costs. We study how resolution responds to changes in price and communication using a new, extensive dataset of copyright infringement incidences by firms. The data cover two field experiments... View Details

Keywords: Copyright; Law Enforcement; Lawsuits and Litigation; Cost