According to the economic theory of patents, patents are needed so that pioneer firm have time to recoup their sunk costs of research and development. The key element in the economic theory is that pioneer firms have large, hard to recoup, sunk costs. Yet patents are not awarded on the basis of a firm’s sunk costs. Patent law, in fact, ignores costs. The disconnect between patent law and patent...

The growth of patent thickets—technology fields that are characterized by a large overlap of rights between different right holders—poses a challenge for innovators. Patent thickets are argued to create strong friction in innovation due to a pronounced potential for holdup. So far, we do not know whether patent thickets coincide in all patent systems or if differences exist that policy makers a...

Patent data have long been used as an indicator of the output of innovative processes. While simple patent counts are publicly available and easily obtained, the private and social value of innovations protected by patents varies widely, making patent counts too noisy an indicator of innovative output in many cases. In finding good measures of the value of patents, it is essential to observe th...

I. History of Chinese Patent Law ......................................................... 67 A. Enactment of Patent Law ............................................................................ 67 B. Subsequent Changes to China’s Patent Law: First Amendment to Patent Law (1992). .................................................................................................. 67 C. Second A...

Nanotechnology patent applications published during 1991-2008 have been examined using the "title-abstract" keyword search on esp@cenet "worldwide" database. The longitudinal evolution of the number of patent applications, their topics, and their respective patent families have been evaluated for 15 national patent offices covering 98% of the total global activity. The patent offices of the Uni...

Patent management is increasingly important for organizations to sustain their competitive advantage. The classification of patents is essential for patent management and industrial analysis. In this study, we propose a novel patent network-based classification method to analyze query patents and predict their classes. The proposed patent network, which contains various types of nodes that repr...

J. J. Hopfield, “Neural Networks and Physical Systems with Emergent Collective Computational Abilities,” Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., USA, vol. 79, pp. 2254-2258, Apr. 1982. R. J. McEliece, et al., “The Capacity of the Hopfield Associative Memory,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. T-33, pp. 461-482, 1987. B. L. Montgomery et al., “Evaluation of the use of Hopfield Neural Network Model as...

I. TRIPS A. Patentability B. Patent Rights 1. Exclusive Rights—Article 28 2. Exceptions to Patent Rights a. Article 30—A “Limited Exception” to Patent Rights b. Article 31—“Other Use” C. Patent “Plus” Protection: Test Data II. TRIPS-PLUS A. Patentability B. Patent Rights 1. Limited Compulsory Licensing During Patent Term 2. Limits on Parallel Imports C. Tension within TRIPS-Plus Agreements and ...

A twenty-first century novel influenza A (H1N1) pandemic is currently unfolding, and the eventual scope of this public health crisis is not clear. In addition, ongoing surveillance of the avian influenza A (H5N1) virus reveals outbreaks of human-to-human transmission of the virus, with significant mortality. Effective pandemic management depends on pharmaceutical intervention with two different...

background: stroke, one of the most important causes of morbidity and mortality in the world, is of great importance in young adults (15-45 years), amongst whom the causes of stroke and transient ischemic attack (tia) are different from those in older ages and a significant portion of them have no known etiology. patent foramen ovale (pfo) is considered a probable cause in this group. methods: ...