Publications

March 2009
Article

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

By: Juan Alcacer, Michelle Gittelman and Bhaven Sampat

Prior art patent citations have become a popular measure of patent quality and knowledge flow between firms. Interpreting these measurements is complicated, in some cases, because prior art citations are added by patent examiners as well as by patent applicants. The... View Details

Keywords: Citations; Patents; Knowledge Sharing; Measurement and Metrics; Quality; United States

2008
Working Paper

The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms and U.S. Ethnic Invention

By: William R. Kerr and William F. Lincoln

This study evaluates the impact of high-skilled immigrants on US technology formation. Specifically, we use reduced-form specifications that exploit large changes in the H-1B visa program. Fluctuations in H-1B admissions levels significantly influence the rate of... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Patents; Ethnicity; Immigration; Innovation and Invention; United States

SSRN

February 2003 (Revised April 2012)
Case

Sheila Mason & Craig Shepherd

Describes a marketing executive and an engineer who are starting a company together. Each is still at his/her former employer, and each has signed a different employment agreement that, on paper, may prohibit soliciting customers or employees. Focuses on how... View Details

Keywords: Resignation and Termination; Intellectual Property; Contracts; Legal Liability; Entrepreneurship; Ethics

November 1995 (Revised February 1996)
Case

Monsanto Company: The Coming of Age of Bio-Technology

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Thomas N. Urban Jr

Monsanto has one product, Roundup, accounting for 30% of company net income and is going off patent. How should the company position itself and its products in the future? View Details

Keywords: Patents; Product Positioning; Strategic Planning; System Shocks; Biotechnology Industry

November 1978 (Revised October 1989)
Case

Amicon Corp. (B)

Details the negotiation between Amicon and three potential licensees, Jackson, Maynard-Smith and Behrstein. View Details

Keywords: Technology; Patents; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Participants; Health Care and Treatment; Biotechnology Industry

2021
Other Unpublished Work

Computer-Implemented Methods and Systems for Measuring, Estimating, and Managing Economic Outcomes and Technical Debt in Software Systems and Projects: US Patent 11,126,427 B2

By: Daniel J. Sturtevant, Carliss Baldwin, Alan MacCormack, Sunny Ahn and Sean Gilliland

An interrelated set of tools and methods is disclosed for: (1) measuring the relationship between software source code attributes (such as code quality, design quality, test quality, and complexity metrics) and software economics outcome metrics (such as... View Details

Keywords: Technical Debt; Applications and Software; Economics; Measurement and Metrics; Patents

August 2001
Article

Technology as a Complex Adaptive System: Evidence from Patent Data

Keywords: Information Technology; System; Patents; Analytics and Data Science

Web

The Ownership Project | Institute for Business in Global Society

frontier of innovation? Drawing on historical insights, the HBS Institute for Business in Global Society’s faculty chair Debora Spar explains the critical role of visionary thinking in shaping new markets. Just as Bill Gates redefined View Details

2024
Working Paper

Patent Hunters

By: Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun, Katie Moon and Paula Suh

Analyzing millions of patents granted by the USPTO between 1976 and 2020, we find a pattern where specific patents only rise to prominence after considerable time has passed. Amongst these late-blooming influential patents, we show that there are key players (patent... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Product Launch; Product; Innovation and Invention

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

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

08 Mar 2011
First Look

First Look: March 8

tinkerers from across the globe led to a process of cumulative innovation unhindered by rivalry operating through the intellectual property rights system. Yet in 1903, the year... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2011
Teaching Note

Zespri (TN)

By: Jose B. Alvarez and Mary Shelman

Teaching Note for 511001. View Details

Keywords: Competition; Brands and Branding; Innovation and Invention; Corporate Strategy; Patents; Food and Beverage Industry; Australia; New Zealand

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

20 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Markets or Communities? The Best Ways to Manage Outside Innovation

benefits of learning) from that attempt. Finally, external innovation appears to be fast—solutions arrive quite quickly and can often exceed the capacity of the seeker. Q: And potential downsides? A: The main concerns about working with outside innovators relate to... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

March 2012 (Revised October 2013)
Supplement

Gene Patents (B)

By: Richard Hamermesh and Phillip Andrews

The case updates events since the Court's ruling against Myriad Genetics on March 29, 2010 and should be used in conjunction with Gene Patents (A). On July 29, 2011, a US Appeals Court reversed the prior ruling against Myriad. On September 16, 2011, the first major... View Details

Keywords: Courts and Trials; Patents; Genetics; Judgments; Investment; Biotechnology Industry; United States