Escalation of advertising or R&D expenditure can give rise to endogenous barriers to entry. This paper investigates whether escalation of investments in R&D raises the return to investments in advertising or vice versa. We provide three empirical tests using a dataset which combines stock market...

This report explores the problem of "cluttering" of trade mark registers. The report consists of two parts:The first presents a conceptual discussion of “cluttering” of trade mark registers.The second part provides an exploratory empirical analysis of trade mark applications at the UK...

We use online search data to predict car sales in the German and UK automobile industries. Search data subsume several distinct search motives, which are not separately observable. We develop a model linking search motives to observable search data and sales. The model shows that predictions of...

This paper exploits enlargement of the European Union as a natural experiment to provide evidence for cluttering of the trade mark register in Europe. Enlargement increased regulatory uncertainty for pharmaceutical firms because the number of medical regulators that had to approve invented names...

The existing literature identifies patent thickets indirectly. In this paper we propose a novel measure based on patent citations which allows us to measure the density of patent thickets directly. We discuss the algorithm which generates the measure and present descriptive results validating...

This paper considers the integration of competition policy and innovation policy in the context of R&D cooperation. An explicit comparison of the welfare losses under ex-ante and ex-post R&D cooperation reveals differing incentives to undertake R&D in both regimes. The strength of these...

We analyse economic welfare in R&D intensive industries under varying assumptions on the spillover process. The focus lies on spillover processes with complementary R&D investments such as those modelling absorptive capacity. There spillovers give rise to both negative and positive...

We analyze the effect of patent thickets on entry into technology areas by firms in the UK. We present a model that describes incentives to enter technology areas characterized by varying technological opportunity, complexity, and the potential for hold-up due to the presence of patent thickets....

This paper introduces a new innovation data source to re-examine how spatial distance affects the diffusion of ideas and innovations in an economy. We exploit the descriptions of products and services contained in U.S. trademark registrations during 1980-2012 to identify terms (tokens) not...

This research is the initial investigation into the relationship between holders of registered IPRs and growth performance of firms, measured in terms of growth in assets, employment, or sales. The results are not intended to be considered in isolation but were used to inform ‘The use of...