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- July 2013
- Article
Ethnic Innovation and U.S. Multinational Firm Activity
By: C. Fritz Foley and William R. Kerr
This paper studies the impact that immigrant innovators have on the global activities of U.S. firms by analyzing detailed data on patent applications and on the operations of the foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational firms. The results indicate that increases in the... View Details
- June 2013 (Revised February 2016)
- Teaching Note
The LEGO Group: Publish or Protect?
By: Willy Shih
Senior managers at the LEGO Group are faced with a quandary: Should they patent inventions coming out of their manufacturing process development work, should they keep them as trade secrets, or should they publish them so that they would go into the public domain and... View Details
- May 2013
- Article
Hybrid Innovation in Meiji Japan
By: Tom Nicholas
Japan's hybrid innovation system during the Meiji era of technological modernization provides a useful laboratory for examining the effectiveness of complementary mechanisms to patents. Patents were introduced in 1885, and by 1911, 1.2 million mostly non-pecuniary... View Details
- 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
- February 2013 (Revised March 2015)
- Case
The LEGO Group: Publish or Protect?
By: Willy C. Shih and Sen Chai
Senior managers at the LEGO Group are faced with a quandary: Should they patent inventions coming out of their manufacturing process development work, should they keep them as trade secrets, or should they publish them so that they would go into the public domain and... View Details
Keywords: Plastics; Injection Molding; Toys; LEGO; LEGO Group; Tools; Additive Manufacturing; 3D Manufacturing; Toolmaking; Patenting; Spillovers; Knowledge Spillovers; Change; Trends; Engineering; Machinery and Machining; Intellectual Property; Patents; Operations; Production; Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Technology Adoption; Consumer Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Technology Industry; Europe; Denmark
- December 2012
- Teaching Note
Gene Patents (A) (TN)
By: Richard G. Hamermesh and Matthew Preble
This is the teaching note for case Gene Patents (A). In March 2010, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Sweet overturned 30 years of legal precedent and ruled that unaltered human genes could not be patented. This case reviews patent law and how it relates to our... View Details
- December 2012
- Article
Inducement Prizes and Innovation
By: Liam Brunt, Josh Lerner and Tom Nicholas
We examine the effect of prizes on innovation using data on awards for technological development offered by the Royal Agricultural Society of England at annual competitions between 1839 and 1939. We find that the effects of prizes on competitive entry are large, and we... View Details
- Winter 2013
- Article
The New Patent Intermediaries: Platforms, Defensive Aggregators and Super-Aggregators
By: Andrei Hagiu and David B. Yoffie
The patent market consists mainly of privately negotiated, bilateral transactions, either sales or cross-licenses, between large companies. There is no eBay, Amazon, New York Stock Exchange, or Kelley's Blue Book equivalent for patents, and when buyers and sellers do... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Did Bank Distress Stifle Innovation During the Great Depression?
By: Ramana Nanda and Tom Nicholas
We find a negative relationship between bank distress and the level, quality and trajectory of firm-level innovation during the Great Depression, particularly for R&D firms operating in capital intensive industries. However, we also show that because a sufficient... View Details
- May 2012 (Revised September 2012)
- Case
HTC Corp. in 2012
By: David B. Yoffie, Juan Alcacer and Renee Kim
After 15 years of remarkable achievements, Taiwan-based HTC Corp. faced difficult times by 2012. CEO Peter Chou, who drove HTC's transformation from an unknown manufacturer of PDAs for other companies to a well-known global player in smartphones, faced an uncertain and... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Telecommunications; Brand Management; Economies Of Scale And Scope; Market Positioning; Intellectual Property Management; Technological Innovation; Information Infrastructure; Competitive Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Patents; Product Positioning; Telecommunications Industry; Taiwan
- 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
- December 2011
- Article
Did R&D Firms Used to Patent? Evidence from the First Innovation Surveys
By: Tom Nicholas
Matching 2,777 R&D firms in surveys conducted by the National Research Council between 1921 and 1938 with U.S. patents reveals that 59 percent of all firms and 88 percent of publicly-traded firms patented. These shares are much higher than those observed for modern R&D... View Details
- August 2011
- Article
Independent Invention During the Rise of the Corporate Economy in Britain and Japan
By: Tom Nicholas
Independent inventors accounted for approximately half of all patents in Britain and Japan by 1930, despite the rise of the corporate economy and the spread of industrial R&D. A mixture of patent renewal and historical citations data reveals that the quality of... View Details
- June 2011 (Revised October 2013)
- Case
Gene Patents (A)
By: Richard Hamermesh, David Kiron and Phillip Andrews
In March 2010, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Sweet overturned 30 years of legal precedent and ruled that unaltered human genes could not be patented. This case reviews patent law and how it relates to our increasing knowledge of the Human Genome. The case issues... View Details
- April 2011
- Teaching Note
Office of Technology Transfer - Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences (TN)
By: Willy Shih and Sen Chai
Teaching Note for 611057. View Details
- April 2011
- Article
Private Equity and Long-Run Investment: The Case of Innovation
By: Josh Lerner, Morten Sorensen and Per Stromberg
A long-standing controversy is whether LBOs relieve managers from short-term pressures of dispersed shareholders, or whether LBO funds themselves are driven by short-term profit motives and sacrifice long-term growth to boost short-term performance. We investigate 495... View Details
- April 2011
- Article
The Origins of Japanese Technological Modernization
By: Tom Nicholas
Explanations of Japanese technological modernization from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century have increasingly focused on domestic capabilities as opposed to the traditional emphasis on knowledge transfers from the West. Yet, the literature is mostly... View Details
Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Body of Literature; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Patents; Measurement and Metrics; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Economic Growth; Developing Countries and Economies; Information Technology; Technology Industry; Japan; Germany; Great Britain; United States
- March 2011 (Revised June 2012)
- Case
Office of Technology Transfer - Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences
By: Willy Shih, Sen Chai, Kamen Bliznashki and Courtney Hyland
Gordon Zong is trying to teach Chinese universities and research institutes how to do effective technology transfer and IP licensing, but he is trying to do it in an environment with weak property rights and an underdeveloped support infrastructure. As the managing... View Details
- March 2011
- Article
Cheaper Patents
By: Tom Nicholas
The 1883 Patents Act in Britain provides perspective for modern patent policy reforms because it radically changed incentives for inventors by reducing filing fees by 84 percent. Patents increased 2.5 fold after the reform, which was evenly distributed across the... View Details
Keywords: Patents; Global Range; Distribution; Demand and Consumers; Organizational Structure; Business Processes; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Policy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Fluctuation; Motivation and Incentives; Distribution Industry; United States; Great Britain
- 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