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PATENT STATISTICS, INNOVATION MANAGEMENT AND IPR
"Innovation and Regulation in Digital Services” Chair/ JRC-IPTS
Tentative agenda
SEMINAR AND EXPERT WORKSHOP: June 5, 2012
10h -17h
The emergence of digital economy strengthened and enhanced the role and strategic use of
intellectual property rights and patents by firms and economic actors. At first sight, the basic
doctrines of strategies vis-à-vis IPR and patent remain very similar in this day and age on the
Internet. Yet the complexity of technology today encompasses new perspectives and more
rigorous policies because of the transformations that took place. They deserve a renewal of
attention and reconsidering regulation.
Therefore, the role of intellectual property has never been greater than today and the
opportunities to use it for strategic and business are numerous. Firstly, we can observe an
increasing proliferation of patents in the sector of ICT. Then, the IPR strategies turned out to
be comprehensive and more offensive, giving the patent a more important role than in the
past, whether it is proprietary strategies or standardization policies. The patent is no longer
just a means of protection; it is also an instrument of aggressive attack to seek additional
income and to weaken competitors. Consequently, the creation of new digital markets and the
existence of new technological opportunities lead to wars of patents as evidenced, for
example, the recent conflicts between Apple and Samsung. Besides, the ability of creating an
appropriate balance between the access to specific technologies (protected by patents) and the
use of various kind of proprietary data (such as users’ profile) opens up new competitive
positioning.
This renewal of the context of intellectual property called important issues in terms of
regulation. First, the basic principles of such regulation (fostering innovation) are challenged
to the extent that intellectual property is not necessarily a driver of innovation in a context of
growing complexity of technology… but is sometimes just as powerful a brake. Then, in
terms of negotiating licenses or pressure on competitors, the role of patent portfolios gives a
special importance to the measurement of these portfolios and patent statistics
Finding various and novel ways to assess innovation are key to understand the changes
brought by digitalisation and the accompanying challenges. Examples of measures which
proxy invention or new knowledge created include the Community Innovation Survey (CIS),
and Patent and Trademark statistics. The CIS provides representative data on innovation
activities across the EU for product and process innovations for goods and services at the
NACE 2-digit level.
Patent statistics are particularly informative about inventions specific to ICT. For instance, the
OECD finds countries with strong specialisation in ICT turning to patents as a prime method
of securing rights on new knowledge. Various studies have already addressed the numerous
advantages of exploiting patent data as a measure of inventive output. Patent data provide
increasingly detailed and wide information on the expected results of research and
development efforts and of inventive activity in general.
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Moreover, the type of information they provide is seen as ‘objective’, and it offers
quantitative results that can be effectively combined with other indicators for cross validation.
Patent data are built up from administrative data compiled by Patent Offices for their internal
purposes of managing the patenting process: they can thus provide wide coverage at relatively
low cost and also over a long time series.
However, the use of patent data as a proxy of inventive output has several shortcomings as
well. On the one hand, not all inventions (and related innovations) are patented, and on the
other, not all patented inventions turn into innovations. In fact, some innovations cannot be
screened by means of patent data (production process innovation, for example), and firms
often opt for different strategies to protect and exploit their inventions (keeping them secret is
the most obvious way).
Furthermore, the value of patents can be very different, as strategic or defensive patenting is a
widely applied strategy to slow down competition in a specific market or to accumulate a
patent portfolio to be used as bargaining power. Differences in patenting fees and rules also
affect the propensity to patent innovations in different countries. For these reasons, different
patent-based indicators are used in order to exploit the available data on patents in the most
effective way.
Measures of invention, such as patent statistics, provide quantitative information about the
output of R&D processes. However, it is an assessment of their socio-economic impact,
together with issues of complementarity and substitutability between public and private R&D
investments, which is of central interest for policy makers.
This seminar will bring together experts from the field to better assess the potential output of
patent analysis, its limits and to explore new modes of analysis.
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10.00 – 10.15 Introduction:
- Pierre Jean Benghozi
10.15- 11.30
1. The value of patents in a digital world?
Chair: Pierre Jean Benghozi
- In an industry with highly sequential innovation such as the software industry do patenting
prevent rather than foster innovation?
- Do software patents tend to reduce competition, raise prices, slow down innovation, and
encourage cartel behaviour( for example, patent pools)?
- Or providing an important and legitimate incentive for R&D?
-What is the right balance between the protection of IPR and competition to foster
innovation?
- Are patents harmful to innovation? Simon Forge, SCF Associates Ltd, London.
- Patents and possible failures in the digital world – Lessons from the patent wars. Jim
Bessen, Boston University School (US)
- Competition and IP, Matthew Heim, Senior Director, Government Affairs & Counsel,
Qualcomm.
11.30-11.45 coffee break
11.45- 12.30
2. Asia: the raising star on the innovation skyline.
Chair: Jean Paul Simon
- The most striking fact is the impressive entrance China made in ICT patenting activity:
China's inventive output increased massively starting in 2000 and overtaking both the EU and
US output by the mid-2000s.
- Data shows that the ICT patent applications filed by China- and Korea-based inventors in
2007 summed up to 91% of the total Asian ICT application output.
- Setting the scene: Network analysis on IT patenting strategies - Daniel Nepelski, JRC-IPTS
- Invited speaker –. Yang Yang, Shanghai Research Center for Wireless Communications
(WiCO), Chinese Academy of Sciences.
12.30- 13.30
3. Patenting strategies
Chair: Yann Ménière, Ecole des Mines, Paris (tbc)
-How patents are taking place in the global R&D networks international division of
innovation processes?
- What are the main strategies to manage the patents portfolio?
- How to they vary according to the core business, the size and age of the company?
- Claudia Tapia Garcia, Director, IP Policy Patent & Standards Strategy, RIM
- Monica Magnusson, Director, Patent Portfolio Management, Ericson
- George Whitten, Patent Attorney Litigator, Qualcomm.
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13.30 – 14.15 Lunch
14.15 -15.15
4. From patent statistics to information tools
Chair: Alain Vallée
- What can patent analysis bring to better understand innovation processes?
- How and what to measure with patent data: overall and ICT overview - Giuditta De Prato,
JRC-IPTS
- Mike Lloyd, International Marketing Manager, Ambercite.com., Ambercite (AU)
15.15- 16.15
5. Measuring inventive output only? Patent at company level
Chair: Daniel Nepelski
- What are the main advantages of using patent as a proxy of inventive output?
- What are the main limits? Are we missing major forms of innovation?
- Bart Van Loy, KU Leuven – ECOOM
- New insights into firm level innovation, usef matched UK data” Benjamin Mitra-Kahn, ,
Economic Advisor, Economics, Research & Evidence, UK IP Office.
16.15-17.15
6. Location of inventive activity
Chair: Giuditta De Prato
- (tbc) REGPAT & OECD-IPR statistics on Digital Technologies- Hélène Dernis, OECD
Paris
- Andrea Maurino, Univeristy of Milano Bicocca (IT)
17.15 – 17.30 Conclusion/ Wrap up
Pierre Jean Benghozi, Giuditta De Prato
17. 30 End of conference