Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Collective Knowledge, Prolific Inventors and the Value of Inventions: An Empirical Study of French, German and British Owned U.S. Patents, 1975-1998

Contents:

Author Info

  • William R. Latham

    () (Department of Economics,University of Delaware)

  • C. Gay
  • Christian LeBas

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to test two related propositions: (1) that there is a direct, positive relationship between the involvement of a prolific inventor in the production of knowledge and the magnitudes in the collective dimension of this knowledge production, as measured by the presence of foreign inventors and the size of the inventive team; and (2) that there is a direct, positive relationship between the involvement of a prolific (or foreign) inventor and the value of the new knowledge produced. We use detailed information from nearly 300,000 patents granted by the US Patent Office to French, German and British inventors over the period from 1975 to 1999. From data available from each patent regarding citations of prior patents and the numbers and identities of the inventors listed in the patent application, we are able to construct measures of collective knowledge, the presence of prolific inventors, and the imputed value of patents. In a novel approach in this literature, we estimate negative binomial multiple regression models for determining measures of both collective knowledge and the value of the patents. We find strong support, after controlling for technological field effects, for hypotheses that both prolific and foreign inventors tend to be parts of larger teams of inventors and that both prolific and foreign inventors tend to produce inventions having more value. In the conclusion, we draw some implications of these results for knowledge governance.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.lerner.udel.edu/economics/WorkingPapers/2005/UDWP2005-16.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Delaware, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number 05-16.

as in new window
Length: 22 pages
Date of creation: 2005
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:dlw:wpaper:05-16

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Purnell Hall, Newark, Delaware 19716
Phone: (302) 831-2551
Fax: (302) 831-6968
Web page: http://www.lerner.udel.edu/departments/economics/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: Inventors; patents; prolific;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. William Latham & Christian Le Bas & Dmitry Volodin, 2013. "Mobility, Productivity and Patent Value for Asian Prolific Inventors: China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, 1975 – 2010," Working Papers 1306, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique (GATE), Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Université Lyon 2, Ecole Normale Supérieure.
  2. Cassiman, Bruno & Veugelers, Reinhilde & Zuniga, P, 2006. "In search of performance effects of (in) direct industry science links," Open Access publications from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven urn:hdl:123456789/120970, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dlw:wpaper:05-16

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Saul Hoffman).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.