This article reviews the literature on knowledge transfer mechanisms (KTMs) used in university-industry interactions. The literature may be articulated around four dimensions: (i) the relative importance of KTM as perceived by the involved stakeholders, (ii) the factors affecting the...

Given the growing size of patent databases and portfolios, scholars and practitioners alike need metrics to help them in weighting patent counts or in ranking patents to focus on the most important ones. The main objective of this paper is to help them in this task with a practical and...

It has long been implicitly assumed that the roaring backlogs experienced by most patent offices around the world – and harshly criticized by many patentees – are a mere mechanical consequence of surging numbers of patent filings. However, different voices suggest that the patent system may...

The sharp increase in academic patenting over the past 20 years raises important issues regarding the generation and diffusion of academic knowledge. Three key questions may be raised in this respect: What is behind the surge in academic patenting? Does patenting affect the quality and quantity...

The length of patent rights is an issue of considerable importance in the design of patent systems, and its optimality has been intensively discussed in the literature. This dimension – taking the form of the number of years during which a given patent has been maintained – has been...

The joint increase in the number and size of patents filed around the world puts patent systems under pressure.This paper addresses issues in measuring the voluminosity of patent applications and highlights patterns in its evolution. The results – based on a 2 million EPO applications database...

The joint increase in the number and size of patents filed around the world puts the patent system under pressure. This paper analyses the sources of this surge in number of claims and pages of patent applications at the EPO. Four hypotheses are scrutinized: the diffusion of national drafting...