Inventions and Improvements Patented

Uses and Nonuses of Patented Inventions

The dual frontier: Patented inventions and prior scientific advance.

The extent to which scientific advances support marketplace inventions is largely unknown. We study 4.8 million U.S. patents and 32 million research articles to determine the minimum citation distance between patented inventions and prior scientific advances. We find that most cited research articles (80%) link forward to a future patent. Similarly, most patents (61%) link backward to a prior r...

Organizational paths of commercializing patented inventions : The effects of transaction costs , firm capabilities , and collaborative ties

This study examines the factors affecting modes of commercializing patented inventions using a novel dataset based on a survey of U.S. inventors. We find that technological uncertainty and possessing complementary assets raise the propensity for internal commercialization. We find that R&D collaboration with firms in a horizontal relationship is likely to increase the propensity to license the

Routine Duplication of Post-2000 Patented Inventions by Means of Genetic Programming

Previous work has demonstrated that genetic programming can automatically create analog electrical circuits, controllers, and other devices that duplicate the functionality and, in some cases, partially or completely duplicate the exact structure of inventions that were patented between 1917 and 1962. This paper reports on a project in which we browsed patents of analog circuits issued after Ja...

A clearing house for diagnostic testing: the solution to ensure access to and use of patented genetic inventions?

In genetic diagnostics, the emergence of a so-called "patent thicket" is imminent. Such an overlapping set of patent rights may have restrictive effects on further research and development of diagnostic tests, and the provision of clinical diagnostic services. Currently, two models that may facilitate access to and use of patented genetic inventions are attracting much debate in various nationa...