This paper explores the characteristics of 238 patents on 94 “inventions” contributed by major multinational innovators to the “Eco-Patent Commons”, which provides royalty-free access to third parties to patented climate change related innovations. By comparing the pledged patents to...

Translating R&D and inventive efforts into a market product is characterized by significant financial skills, and the ability to overcome technical and instititonal barriers. Research into and translation of new technologies such as biotechnology products to the market requires even greater...

Two court decisions in the 1990s are widely viewed as having opened the door to a flood of business method and financial patents at the US Patent and Trademark Office, and to have also impacted other patent offices around the world. A number of scholars, both legal and economic, have critiqued...

Global climate change mitigation will require the development and diffusion of a large number and variety of new technologies. How will patent protection affect this process? In this paper we first review the evidence on the role of patents for innovation and international technology transfer in...

We estimate the value of Chinese invention and utility model patents that were applied for during two periods, 1987-1989 and 1986-1998. We find that patents applied for by foreign entities invariably have higher value than do those applied for by domestic entities, and the gap is significant....

This paper demonstrates that radical regulatory changes can be tantamount to technological revolutions by studying Indian pharmaceutical firms. It shows that radical regulatory changes such as the Indian Patent Act of 1970, the New Industrial Policy of 1991 and the signing of TRIPS (Trade...

This paper explains the importance of IPRs and examines the factors hindering and those contributing toward enhancing IPRs in Sudan. We find that the inadequacy of IPRs protection in Sudan is attributed to low integration in the international institutions, lack of legal issues, lack of...

This paper examines the degree of polarization of GDP per capita of African economies between 1966 and 2008. Based on a nonparametric analysis, we find that countries tend to cluster in two classes of per capita GDP. Relying on the Wolfson's bipolarization measure, the results reveal that...

We use an extended version of the well-established Crepon, Duguet and Mairesse model 1998 to model the relationship between appropriability mechanisms, innovation and firm-level productivity. We enrich this model in several ways. First, we consider different types of innovation spending and...

This paper analyses how corruption affects firms ownership of intellectual property titles that relate to firms technological, organizational and further innovation efforts quality certificates and patents. Using firm-level data covering 48 developing and emerging countries, we show corruption...