Catalina Martínez

Patent families: When do different definitions really matter?

Data on patent families is used in economic and statistical studies for many purposes, including the analysis of patenting strategies of applicants, the monitoring of the globalization of inventions and the comparison of the inventive performance and stock of technological knowledge of different countries. Most of these studies take family data as given, as a sort of black box, without going into the details of their underlying methodologies and patent linkages. However, different definitions of patent families may lead to different results. One of the purposes of this paper is to compare the most commonly used definitions of patent families and identify factors causing differences in family outcomes. Another objective is to shed light into the internal structure of patent families and see how it affects patent family outcomes based on different definitions. An automated characterization of the internal structures of all extended families with earliest priorities in the 1990s, as recorded in PATSTAT, found that family counts are not affected by the choice of patent family definitions in 75% of families. However, different definitions may really matter for the 25% of families with complex structures and lead to different family compositions, which might have an impact, for instance, on econometric studies using family size as a proxy of patent value.

Valuation and Exploitation of Intellectual Property

As firms shift to more open models of innovation based on collaboration and external sourcing of knowledge, they are exploiting their intellectual property, notably patents, not only by incorporating protected inventions into new products, processes and services, but also by licensing them to other firms or public research organisations (PROs), using them as bargaining chips in negotiations with other firms, and as a means of attracting external financing from banks, venture capitalists and other sources... Valorisation et exploitation de la propriete intellectuelle A mesure que les entreprises s’orientent vers des modeles d’innovation plus ouverts fondes sur la collaboration et l’exploitation de sources externes de connaissances, elles tirent profit de leur propriete intellectuelle, notamment de leurs brevets, non seulement en integrant des inventions protegees dans des produits, procedes et services nouveaux, mais aussi en les concedant sous licence a d’autres entreprises ou a des organismes de recherche publics, en les utilisant comme monnaie d’echange dans les negociations engagees avec d’autres entreprises et comme un moyen d’obtenir des financements exterieurs aupres des institutions bancaires, des investisseurs en capital-risque et d’autres sources...

Pre-emptive patenting: securing market exclusion and freedom of operation

We investigate statistically the characteristics, functioning and incidence of pre-emptive patenting, defined as patent filings whose main effect is to hamper the grant of other patents. Patent applications can be used defensively to prevent the grant of exclusive rights over markets and technologies, in order to ensure freedom of operation or keep competitors out of a given technological field. Combining data from examination outcomes and prior art at the European Patent Office, we develop a methodology to identify pre-emptive patent applications. We find evidence of pre-emption associated with patent applications cited as compromising patentability while not being deemed relevant to the state of the art. We also find that, among them, those which are withdrawn have the strongest pre-emptive power. The coincidence of low inventiveness and high pre-emptive impact supports the idea that some of these patents may be strategically designed by their applicants to block patenting by others.

Open Innovation in a Global Perspective

Open innovation has received a lot of attention in the business management literature and recently also in policy discussions. Until now, most of the empirical evidence has been based on case study work offering detailed insights into some best practices of open innovation in companies’ innovation strategies. While existing large-scale data may offer interesting empirical evidence on open innovation, they have surprisingly not really been analysed in great detail. Especially the increasing importance of open innovation on a global scale in so-called global innovation networks, calls for internationally comparable data on open innovation. This paper presents different indicators using existing data on R&D investments, innovation survey data, patent data and data on licensing, illustrating the increasing importance and the different characteristics of open innovation across companies, industries and countries.

Academic Inventors, Scientific Impact and the Institutionalisation of Pasteur's Quadrant in Spain

We rely on a novel database of Spanish author-inventors to explore the relationship between the past patenting experience of academic authors and the scientific impact (citations received and journal prestige) of scientific articles published during 2003–2008 in journals listed in SCOPUS. We also study how such a relationship is affected by differences across academic affiliations, distinguishing between public universities and different types of non-university public research organisations. Our econometric estimations show that scientific impact is positively associated with having authors with past patenting experience as inventors at the European Patent Office. Exceptions are the articles of authors affiliated to new independent public research centres, not tied to the civil service model and oriented to do research that is both excellent and use-inspired. These are also on average the most cited articles.

Home or next door? Patenting by European food and beverage multinationals

We study the location of the inventive activity of 59 major European food and beverage multinationals and their 8432 subsidiaries worldwide, by analysing the geographical distribution of the inventors listed in the European Patent Office (EPO) applications, US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patents and triadic, international and Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent families of the companies filed between 1978 and the early 2000s. The sampled companies tend to locate their R&D activities in the home country. EU-based companies, more specifically, deploy an intra-regional strategy in EU countries, especially with regard to the inventions most closely related to their core businesses (food), for which, however, they do not display a home-country preference. Inventions related to non-core business tend to be produced in extra-regional locations.

Tracking patent transfers in different European countries: methods and a first application to medical technologies

Drawing on more than half a million granted patents in all technological sectors filed at EPO between 1998 and 2012 we gather information on 300,000 inscriptions affecting changes in their ownership at the EPO and top national registers (France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain). After grouping parallel legal events in different European validation countries, we find that more than 30% of EPO patents in all fields change ownership at least once. For the field of medical technologies, we exploit additional information on corporate structures to further distinguish between “intragroup” and “bare” changes of ownership thanks. Our results indicate that more than two-thirds of the transfers happen “intragroup”, that is between related corporate entities. Using regressions analyses, we finally explore and discuss relations between the occurrence and types of these transfers of patent and proxies for patent quality.

Contracting for technology transfer: patent licensing and know-how in Brazil

Abstract Using contract-level data, we study the relation between the inclusion of know-how in cross-border patent licensing agreements and the contractual terms used by firms to deal with moral hazard risks. We use official data on international technology contracts with patent licensing terms registered by affiliated and unaffiliated parties before the Department of Technology Transfer of the National Institute of Intellectual Property (INPI) in Brazil between 1996 and 2012. We find that contracts between unaffiliated parties involving know-how transfer show distinctive contractual and technology features compared to the rest: (i) they involve younger but lower quality technologies (compared to contracts without know-how); (ii) they are more prone to up front lump-sum payments than royalty or combined payments (royalty and fixed); and (iii) they are more likely to be accompanied by the licensing of other IPRs, in addition to patents, such as trademarks.

Pre-Emptive Patenting

We investigate statistically the characteristics, functioning and incidence of pre-emptive patenting, defined as patent filings whose main effect is to hamper the grant of other patents. Patent applications can be used to prevent the grant of exclusive rights on markets and technologies to others in order to ensure freedom of operation to their holder or keep patent-less competitors out of the market. Combining data from examination outcomes and prior art at the European Patent Office (EPO), we develop a methodology to identify pre-emptive patent applications. We find evidence of pre-emption associated to patent applications cited as compromising patentability while being deemed non inventive. Furthermore, amongst them, those which are withdrawn by the applicant have the strongest pre-emptive power. The coincidence of low inventiveness and high pre-emptive impact supports the idea that some of these patents may be strategically designed by their applicants to block patenting by others.

The Control and Generation of Technology in European Food and Beverage Multinationals

Using a sample of 59 major European food and beverage multinationals and their 8,432 subsidiaries worldwide, we study the characteristics and evolution over time of their inventions. In doing so, we analyse: i) 8,626 EPO applications filed by these companies between 1978 and 2005; ii) 3,650 US patents they applied for between 1978 and 2001; iii) more than 2,000 patent families of three different kinds; and iv) the location of their RD however, such companies do not display a geographical preference with regard to high value or technically complex innovations, which are generated at home and abroad and inside and outside the EU. From these findings we extract conclusions relevant to European R&D policy.