Did I mention this paper before? The Report is the output of a research project (ETD/2004/IM/E3/77) conducted for the European Commission, Directorate-General for Internal Market. The project was administered by the CERM Foundation (Siena, Italy) with the following partner institutions to develop the project: LEM, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, ZEW and Inno-tec, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Eindhoven University of Technology, SPRU, University of Sussex, Université Lyon2, INSEAD, University of Pécs. Its title is 'Study on evaluating the knowledge economy - What are patents actually worth? The value of patents for today's economy and society.' and it has been drawn up on EU funds under Tender n° MARKT/2004/09/E. We see the 'Final Report for Lot 1' dated May 09, 2005:
"[...] This Report deals with the economic value of European patents and offers a comprehensive analysis of the 'state of the art' on this issue. It provides a complete survey of the existing scientific literature in economic and business studies, and it uses original data to present descriptive statistics and elaborations on the value of European patents. [...]
The analysis of the background literature helped us refine the plan for research in Lot 2 of this Project. Moreover, by summarising the main contributions on the four Themes of our study, the survey of the literature highlighted the main gaps in the existing literature that would need further investigation either from the theoretical and empirical point of view. [...]
It is worth stressing that the analysis of the background literature and the empirical work with patent data performed in Lot 1 provided useful suggestions to guide the research in Lot 2. On the one hand, as noted above, they suggested that there are still many open problems and questions to be addressed, and they showed the gaps in the empirical literature. For instance, we found that an important gap in the literature concerns the impact of patenting activity - and in particular the impact of specific characteristics of patents, applicants and invention processes - on R&D. This will inspire the empirical models to be developed in Lot 2. On the other hand, the analysis of the data in Section 3 and Section 4 of Lot 1 provided a general base for guiding the empirical investigation in Lot 2, and the search for policy suggestions that are expected to arise from the results of the studies in Lot 2.
For example, the descriptive statistics pointed out that there are interesting differences across European countries and regions, technological classes, and types of inventors' employers (i.e. private firms vs. public organisations; companies vs. universities and other research institutions; large vs. small firms; domestic vs. foreign applicants) concerning the value and the cost of the European patents, their use, the formation of new firms, and the occurrence of spillovers and collaborations among inventors and institutions in the innovation process. More systematic empirical analysis is needed to explore these differences and their causes. More precisely, in order to identify the net effect of different factors on the variables of interest (i.e. the value of patents, the propensity to start a new company, etc.), we need to perform multiple correlation analyses based on specific econometric models.
Against this background, we plan to produce a series of scientific studies concerning the advantages and disadvantages of the patent system, and in particular the direct and indirect impact of patents on the economy and society. For each Theme we will develop aggregate econometric contributions and contributions at the level of specific countries, technological classes and inventors? employers. We will also integrate the datasets used in Lot 1 with additional data required for the specific purpose of the different studies. The remaining part of this Section presents a detailed research plan for Lot 2 in line with the original research project. [...]"
'Final Report for Lot 1' dated May 09, 2005: