Dr. Kyriakos Drivas (University of California, Berkeley)

Programm

• Datum: 27.06.2012
  Zeit: 17:15-18:45
  Ort: Kaulbachstraße 45, Raum E004

Patent Transactions through the Lens of Geography

This presentation is an introduction to a dataset of US issued traded patents which has been recently compiled by the Office of the Chief Economist at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)*. The presentation will introduce two distinct questions. The first question examines, both internationally and intra-nationally for the US case, to what extent this innovation market is localized. Finally, the any observed localization phenomenon is further studied to examine whether it decays in more recent years. Even though, distance has been identified as an obstacle in knowledge diffusion, recent evidence has shown that the role of distance decays in recent years (Griffith, Lee and Reenen 2011). This current study examines whether a similar behavior is observed for patent transactions. The second question considers the role of patents in the geographic reach of technology diffusion. It examines the effect of a patent grant on the geographic reach of a subsequent transfer of the patented invention. While the role of patents in technology transfer is well documented (Elfenein 2007 and Gans, Hsu and King 2008) the dimension of geography is less studied. To my knowledge only the study by Moser (2011) has examined explicitly a related question in the context of 19th century’s World Fairs. She finds how an exogenous change in the rate of patenting in the chemical field reduced the Herfindahl index of concentration of inventions suggesting that patents weakened the localization of innovation.

*In the US, when US issued patents are re-assigned from one entity to another, the entities are required to disclose such transaction to the USPTO.