This paper seeks to understand the intriguing but only sparsely explored phenomenon of “leisure timeinvention,” where the main underlying idea for the new product or process occurs when the inventor isaway from the workplace. We add to previous research by focussing on the inventive...

This paper analyzes firms’ choices regarding the geographic scope of patentprotection within the European patent system. We develop an econometric modelat the patent level to quantify the impact of office fees and translation costs onfirms’ decision to validate a patent in a particular...

Although labor mobility has been recognized as a key mechanism to transfer tacit knowledge,prior research on inventors has so far neglected to address the question of the consequence ofa move on inventive performance. This paper improves on the current R&D literature bypresenting a...

Germany is one of few countries in which the monetary compensation for inventors is notonly determined by negotiations between employer and employee-inventor, but also byrelatively precise legal provisions. In this paper, we describe the characteristics of the GermanEmployees’ Inventions Act...

This paper provides new information, not available from other sources, on the characteristics ofthe innovation process in Europe, and on the economic use and value of European patents. Ourdata are drawn from a survey (PatVal-EU, or PatVal for short) of 9,017 patents granted by theEuropean Patent...

This paper analyzes the causality between inventor productivity and inventor mobility. Theresults show that the level of education has no influence on inventor productivity. Making useof external sources of knowledge, on the contrary, has a significant effect on productivity.Finally, firm size...