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Revision as of 23:59, 11 April 2013
, 23:59, 11 April 2013→Papers with reviews in progress
@article{bessen2003patent,
title={Patent Thickets: Strategic Patenting of Complex TaechnologiesTechnologies},
author={Bessen, J.},
journal={Available at SSRN 327760},
industry={General, ICT},
thicket_stance={Pro},
thicket_stance_extract={#A, #C1-T, This paper argues that patent thickets can reduce R&D incentives even when there are no transaction costs, holdup or vertical monopoly problems.}, thicket_def={#A, #C1-T, References Heller/Eisenberg, References Shapiro, Dubious Patents, Diversely-Held, Transaction Costs, Strategic Patenting (Bad)},
thicket_def_extract={The problem Baker describes is often called a "patent thicket." These occur when each product may involve many patents, in contrast with the one-to-one correspondence between products and patents that is assumed in the patent race literature. Recent commentators suggest that lower patenting standards encourage patent thickets, creating difficulties for innovators (see Gallini, 2002, for a review). When innovators must negotiate with large numbers of patentholders, they may face excessive transaction costs (Heller and Eisenberg, 1998), "holdup," and problems of vertical monopoly (Shapiro, 2001).},
tags={#Core Paper, Private Mechanisms, Cross-licensing, Pools, Firm Strategy, Blocking Patents, Sequential Innovation},
thicket_stance={Weak Anti},
thicket_stance_extract={Evidence does not support the argument that patents simply are not needed to spur innovation, or that patents block future innovation by causing non-negotiable thickets of rights and reducing the software commons. Arguments like these are based largely on theory with a smattering of anecdotes thrown in, rather than on hard empirical evidence.},
thicket_def={#A, #B, References Shapiro, References Heller/Eisenberg, Cummulative Invention, Strategic Patenting (Bad), Unspecified Blocking Mechanism},
thicket_def_extract={The theoretical economics literature argues that when innovations are sequential and cumulative, patents may impose more than the typical exclusion-period costs.113 For instance, a patent for an invention early in the innovative process could impose a toll on each sequential innovation that relies on it. Subsequent inventors, therefore, face higher transaction costs––they must pay licensing fees before they can further refine a technology. As the tolls build during the technology’s development path, later research could be discouraged altogether. Alluding to the famous argument for property rights, over-patenting has been dubbed the “tragedy of the anticommons,” as too many people with exclusionary rights can cause underutilization of resources.114 Shapiro uses another metaphor: the patent thicket... Based on the theoretical literature, software patent opponents claim that patent thickets will develop in the software industry. Thus, they assert that patents allow a company or individual to prevent the type of incremental innovation that is so important in the software industry. When small pieces of software that are adaptable to a multitude of applications can be and are patented, it becomes increasingly likely that each complex program will infringe someone’s patent. Therefore, opponents argue that developers have incentives to “over-patent” for strategic or defensive reasons in order to gain leverage in cross-licensing negotiations.119 Strategic patenting results in a patent thicket, an impenetrable barrier to further innovation.},
tags={#Core Paper},
discipline={Law},
research_type={Discussion},
industry={SoftwareGeneral},
thicket_stance={Neutral},
thicket_stance_extract={The way forward from here is obvious. We need both more data, and more nuanced theory to account for it. And we also need a better understanding of when and how government policy can be brought to bear on these issues. For example, we are just beginning to see how patterns of post-grant transactions affect the economic impact of various property right entitlements. This will have obvious implications for our thinking about the proper contours of property right grants. At the same time, it is likely that in certain cases it will be very difficult or impossible to see far enough down the road to predict the post-grant landscape. In such cases, we must be sensitive to the need for rules and doctrines that permit the “visible hand” of government to prod or even force parties into transactions.},
pages={1617},
year={2006},
abstract={The network may be the metaphor of the present era. A network, consisting of \"nodes" and \"links," may be a group of individuals linked by friendship; a group of computers linked by network cables; a system of roads or airline ights { flights or another of a virtually limitless variety of systems of connected \things." The past few years have seen an explosion of interest in \network science," which seeks to move beyond metaphor to analysis in �elds from physics to sociology. Network science highlights the role of relationship patterns in deter- mining collective behavior. It underscores and begins to address the di�culty of predicting collective behavior from individual interactions. This Article seeks �rst to describe how network science can provide new conceptual and empiri- cal approaches to legal questions because of its focus on analyzing the e�ects of patterns of relationships on collective behavior. The Article then illustrates the network approach by describing a study of the network created by patents and the citations between them. Burgeoning patenting has raised concerns about patent quality, re ected in proposed legislation and in renewed Supreme Court attention to patent law. The network approach allows us to get behind the increasing numbers and investigate the patterns of relationships between patented technologies. We can then distinguish between faster technological progress, increasing breadth of patented technologies, and a lower patentability standard as possible explanations for increased patenting. We �nd that, since the late 1980s, the disparity in likelihood of citation between the most \citable" and least \citable" patents has grown, suggesting that the least citable patents may represent increasingly trivial inventions. One possible explanation of this increasing strati�cation is increasing reliance by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals on the widely criticized \motivation or suggestion to combine" test for nonobviousness, which is at issue in the case of KSR v. Tele ex, currently pending at the Supreme Court. We also discuss how network science may be employed to address other issues of patent law.},
discipline={Law},
research_type={Discussion, Measures},
@article{von2012incidence,
title={Incidence and Growth of Patent Thickets-The Impact of Technological Opportunities and Complexity},
author={von Von Graevenitz, G. and Wagner, S. and Harhoff, D.},
journal={Journal of Industrial Economics},
year={2012},
