Doctoral Dissertation Research: Uses and non-uses of patented inventions

博士论文研究：专利发明的使用和不使用

• 批准号: 0823372
• 负责人: John Walsh
• 金额: $ 0.8万
• 依托单位: Georgia Tech Research Corporation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-08-01 至 2009-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0823372&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Uses; non

Innovation is a vital element for national and industrial competitiveness and building up innovation capabilities is central to the agenda of policy makers and firms. However, while much of this policy focus has been on encouraging invention (generating new ideas), innovation (putting those ideas into practice) is the critical step for economic growth. Most innovation research has regarded invention as a proxy measure of innovation and, as a result, addressed innovation only in a fragmented and incomplete way.The objective of this dissertation funded by the Science, Technology, and Society Program is to examine the uses of inventions in relation to multiple factors that can be managed by public policy or by entities participating in the innovation process. In particular, this study aims to examine the factors and conditions that affect the choice of commercial uses of patented inventions, including internal use (new or improved product or process), licensing, and forming a start-up firm. Furthermore, this study builds on earlier work on the strategic uses of patents to explore other "non-uses" of patents, such as to provide freedom to operate, or to provide access to rivals' technologies. The increasingly pervasive uses of patents in these non-traditional ways have accelerated patent races among firms and ignited policy debates about whether the current patent system is suitable for promoting the progress of science and technology and contributing to innovation. The key questions of this study are to map the prevalence of different modes of exploiting patents and to examine the impacts of the strength of patents, complementary assets, firm size, knowledge sources and collaboration on the mode choice of patent uses and non-uses.This study examines this important question using large-scale, multi-level and cross-industry data constructed from a survey of over 1900 inventors, supplemented with data from patent documents, and firm and industry databases. This inventor survey is the only large-scale survey of invention and innovation in the United States since the Carnegie Mellon survey of 1994.

创新是国家和工业竞争力的一个重要因素，建立创新能力是决策者和公司议程的核心。 然而，尽管这一政策的重点主要是鼓励发明（产生新想法），但创新（将这些想法付诸实践）是经济增长的关键一步。 大多数创新研究都将发明视为创新的代理指标，因此，只能以零散和不完整的方式来解决创新问题。本论文的目的是研究发明的使用与公共政策或参与创新过程的实体可以管理的多种因素之间的关系。特别是，本研究旨在研究影响专利发明商业用途选择的因素和条件，包括内部使用（新的或改进的产品或工艺），许可证和成立初创公司。此外，本研究报告还以早先关于专利的战略用途的工作为基础，探讨专利的其他“非用途”，如提供经营自由或提供获得竞争对手技术的机会。以这些非传统方式使用专利的现象日益普遍，加速了企业间的专利竞赛，并引发了关于现行专利制度是否适合促进科技进步和创新的政策辩论。本研究的核心问题是绘制不同专利利用模式的流行图，并考察专利实力、互补资产、企业规模、知识来源和合作对专利使用和不使用模式选择的影响。本研究使用了对1900多名发明人进行调查的大规模、多层次和跨行业数据，并辅以来自专利文献、公司和行业数据库的数据。这项发明家调查是自1994年卡内基梅隆大学调查以来美国唯一一项大规模的发明和创新调查。