Innovation and its discontents Jaffe, Adam B; Jaffe, Adam B; Lerner, Josh
2008., 20110527, 2011, 2004, 2005-01-01, 20040101
eBook
The United States patent system has become sand rather than lubricant in the wheels of American progress. Such is the premise behind this provocative and timely book by two of the nation's leading ...experts on patents and economic innovation.
•Patented inventions vary widely in their relative quality, however this is defined.•A framework for comparing patent-quality-related outcomes is presented.•Common outcomes, such as forward citation ...counts or patent lifetime, are very inconsistent in their assessment of what constitutes a ’high-quality’ patent.•The relationships between these outcomes and patent characteristics defined at grant are extremely variable across outcomes and technology types.•Neither measurement of patent quality, nor policy responses to a proliferation of poor-quality patents, are likely to be sensibly addressed by a one-size-fits-all approach.
The quality of novel technological innovations is extremely variable, and the ability to measure innovation quality is essential to sensible, evidence-based policy. Patents, an often vital precursor to a commercialised innovation, share this heterogeneous quality distribution. A pertinent question then arises: How should we define and measure patent quality? Accepting that different parties have different views of, and different sets of terminologies for discussing this concept, we take a multi-dimensional view of patent quality in this work. We first test the consistency of popular post-grant outcomes that are often used as patent quality measures. Finding these measures to be generally inconsistent, we then use a raft of patent indicators available at the time of grant to dissect the characteristics of different post-grant outcomes. We find broad disagreement in the relative importance of individual characteristics between outcomes and, further, significant variation of the same across technologies within outcomes. We conclude that measurement of patent quality is highly sensitive to both the observable outcome selected and the technology type. Our findings bear concrete implications for scholarly research using patent data and policy discussions about patent quality.
► We provide a new patent indicator: the worldwide count of priority filings. ► Comprehensive measure of patenting that is the source of all existing patent series. ► The indicator better reflects ...innovative performance of developing economies. ► The indicator eliminates the home bias that affects existing patent indicators. ► The methodological contribution involves recovering missing data from family link.
This paper describes a new patent-based indicator of inventive activity. The indicator is based on counting all the priority patent applications filed by a country's inventors, regardless of the patent office in which the application is filed, and can therefore be considered as a complete ‘matrix’ of all patent counts. The method has the advantage of covering more inventions than the selective Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) or triadic families counts, while at the same time limiting the home-country bias of single-country-based indicators (inventors from a particular country tend to file in their own country). The indicator is particularly useful to identify emerging technologies and to assess the innovation performance of developing economies.
•IoT-driven digitization has agile innovation.•The catch-up of Asian countries is becoming stagnated.•The U.S. is becoming resurrected.•The network effect is important in IoT-driven digitization.
The ...purpose of this paper is to understand changes in the technological competitiveness of countries induced by Internet of Things (IoT)-driven digitization. Patent analysis, as one of the best ways to measure technological competitiveness, exhibits three characteristics of IoT-driven digitization, namely, agile innovation, stagnation across Asian countries, and the resurgence of the U.S., in turn taking advantage of network effects. The agile innovation of IoT-driven digitization suggests that digitization relies less on existing technologies and enables the leveraging of opportunities that arise from new order emergence. Some Asian countries took advantage of agile innovation as a window of opportunity in the previous age of digitization. These countries now lag less behind the U.S. as a result. Nevertheless, as these countries experience difficulties in taking advantage of agile innovation in the current age of digitization, they lag further behind the U.S. in terms of IoT-driven digitization. The structure of joint patent applications reveals that the U.S. has become a hub between the two European communities, the Chinese community and individual pro-American countries, implying that the network effect of IoT-driven digitization could have a significant impact on the technological competitiveness of countries.
What is the optimal system of intellectual property rights to encourage innovation? Empirical evidence from economic history can help to inform important policy questions that have been difficult to ...answer with modern data: For example, does the existence of strong patent laws encourage innovation? What proportion of innovations is patented? Is this share constant across industries and over time? How does patenting affect the diffusion of knowledge? How effective are prominent mechanisms, such as patent pools and compulsory licensing, that have been proposed to address problems with the patent system? This essay summarizes results of existing research and highlights promising areas for future research. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Abstract
The presence of a patent foramen ovale (PFO) is implicated in the pathogenesis of a number of medical conditions; however, the subject remains controversial and no official statements have ...been published. This interdisciplinary paper, prepared with involvement of eight European scientific societies, aims to review the available trial evidence and to define the principles needed to guide decision making in patients with PFO. In order to guarantee a strict process, position statements were developed with the use of a modified grading of recommendations assessment, development, and evaluation (GRADE) methodology. A critical qualitative and quantitative evaluation of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures was performed, including assessment of the risk/benefit ratio. The level of evidence and the strength of the position statements of particular management options were weighed and graded according to predefined scales. Despite being based often on limited and non-randomised data, while waiting for more conclusive evidence, it was possible to conclude on a number of position statements regarding a rational general approach to PFO management and to specific considerations regarding left circulation thromboembolism. For some therapeutic aspects, it was possible to express stricter position statements based on randomised trials. This position paper provides the first largely shared, interdisciplinary approach for a rational PFO management based on the best available evidence.
Whether closure of a patent foramen ovale is effective in the prevention of recurrent ischemic stroke in patients who have had a cryptogenic stroke is unknown. We conducted a trial to evaluate ...whether closure is superior to medical therapy alone in preventing recurrent ischemic stroke or early death in patients 18 to 60 years of age.
In this prospective, multicenter, randomized, event-driven trial, we randomly assigned patients, in a 1:1 ratio, to medical therapy alone or closure of the patent foramen ovale. The primary results of the trial were analyzed when the target of 25 primary end-point events had been observed and adjudicated.
We enrolled 980 patients (mean age, 45.9 years) at 69 sites. The medical-therapy group received one or more antiplatelet medications (74.8%) or warfarin (25.2%). Treatment exposure between the two groups was unequal (1375 patient-years in the closure group vs. 1184 patient-years in the medical-therapy group, P=0.009) owing to a higher dropout rate in the medical-therapy group. In the intention-to-treat cohort, 9 patients in the closure group and 16 in the medical-therapy group had a recurrence of stroke (hazard ratio with closure, 0.49; 95% confidence interval CI, 0.22 to 1.11; P=0.08). The between-group difference in the rate of recurrent stroke was significant in the prespecified per-protocol cohort (6 events in the closure group vs. 14 events in the medical-therapy group; hazard ratio, 0.37; 95% CI, 0.14 to 0.96; P=0.03) and in the as-treated cohort (5 events vs. 16 events; hazard ratio, 0.27; 95% CI, 0.10 to 0.75; P=0.007). Serious adverse events occurred in 23.0% of the patients in the closure group and in 21.6% in the medical-therapy group (P=0.65). Procedure-related or device-related serious adverse events occurred in 21 of 499 patients in the closure group (4.2%), but the rate of atrial fibrillation or device thrombus was not increased.
In the primary intention-to-treat analysis, there was no significant benefit associated with closure of a patent foramen ovale in adults who had had a cryptogenic ischemic stroke. However, closure was superior to medical therapy alone in the prespecified per-protocol and as-treated analyses, with a low rate of associated risks. (Funded by St. Jude Medical; RESPECT ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00465270.).
The options for secondary prevention of cryptogenic embolism in patients with patent foramen ovale are administration of antithrombotic medications or percutaneous closure of the patent foramen ...ovale. We investigated whether closure is superior to medical therapy.
We performed a multicenter, superiority trial in 29 centers in Europe, Canada, Brazil, and Australia in which the assessors of end points were unaware of the study-group assignments. Patients with a patent foramen ovale and ischemic stroke, transient ischemic attack (TIA), or a peripheral thromboembolic event were randomly assigned to undergo closure of the patent foramen ovale with the Amplatzer PFO Occluder or to receive medical therapy. The primary end point was a composite of death, nonfatal stroke, TIA, or peripheral embolism. Analysis was performed on data for the intention-to-treat population.
The mean duration of follow-up was 4.1 years in the closure group and 4.0 years in the medical-therapy group. The primary end point occurred in 7 of the 204 patients (3.4%) in the closure group and in 11 of the 210 patients (5.2%) in the medical-therapy group (hazard ratio for closure vs. medical therapy, 0.63; 95% confidence interval CI, 0.24 to 1.62; P=0.34). Nonfatal stroke occurred in 1 patient (0.5%) in the closure group and 5 patients (2.4%) in the medical-therapy group (hazard ratio, 0.20; 95% CI, 0.02 to 1.72; P=0.14), and TIA occurred in 5 patients (2.5%) and 7 patients (3.3%), respectively (hazard ratio, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.23 to 2.24; P=0.56).
Closure of a patent foramen ovale for secondary prevention of cryptogenic embolism did not result in a significant reduction in the risk of recurrent embolic events or death as compared with medical therapy. (Funded by St. Jude Medical; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00166257.).
The size of patent applications has doubled over the past two decades, resulting in a dramatic surge in the workload of patent offices all over the world and serious concerns over patent quality ...standards. The current paper investigates the sources of this inflation in claims and pages for EPO applications. Four hypotheses are quantitatively examined: the diffusion of national drafting practices, the complexity of research activities, the emergence of new sectors, and filing strategies. The results validate the four hypotheses. They reveal major differences across countries in patent drafting styles, especially between Civil and Common Law countries, the latter being characterized by much larger patents. Second, the success of the PCT route is leading to the harmonizing of drafting styles worldwide on the US model. This paper therefore challenges the commonly accepted idea that more claims reflect a broader scope of protection by showing that the size of patents is partly due to institutional changes in the system.
Objective To compare neurodevelopmental outcomes of extremely preterm infants diagnosed with patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) who were treated medically or surgically and those who were not diagnosed ...with PDA or who did not undergo treatment for PDA. Study design This retrospective population-based cohort study used data from a geographically defined area in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory served by a network of 10 neonatal intensive care units. Patients included all preterm infants born at <29 completed weeks of gestation between 1998 and 2004. Moderate/severe functional disability at 2-3 years corrected age was defined as developmental delay, cerebral palsy requiring aids, sensorineural or conductive deafness (requiring bilateral hearing aids or cochlear implant), or bilateral blindness (best visual acuity of <6/60). Results Follow-up information at age 2-3 years was available for 1473 infants (74.8%). Compared with infants not diagnosed with a PDA or who did not receive PDA treatment for PDA, those with medically treated PDA (aOR, 1.622; 95% CI, 1.199-2.196) and those with surgically treated PDA (aOR, 2.001; 95% CI, 1.126-3.556) were at significantly greater risk for adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes at age 2-3 years. Conclusion Our results demonstrate that treatment for PDA may be associated with a greater risk of adverse neurodevelopmental outcome at age 2-3 years. This was particularly so among infants born at <25 weeks gestation. These results may support permissive tolerance of PDAs; however, reasons for this association remain to be elucidated through carefully designed prospective trials.
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