We take a first look at financial patents at the European Patent Office (EPO). As is the case at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the number of financial patents in Europe has increased significantly in parallel with significant changes in payment and financial systems. Scholars have argued that financial patents, like other business methods patents, have low value and are owned f...

The development and diffusion of antibiotics contributed to large improvements in human health and living standards. The antibiotic revolution also spawned the modern pharmaceutical industry. This paper reviews the development of the early antibiotics, and the roles of intellectual property rights (in particular, patents) in their development and diffusion. Though today the pharmaceutical secto...

In this paper, we review some of the recent patents on spectrum sensing techniques for cognitive radio (CR) applications. The presented patents are categorized under: 1) spectrum sensing algorithms and architectures, 2) spectrum sensing and data communication and 3) cooperative spectrum sensing. The presented patents include special sensing algorithms that are based on the multi-resolution spec...

The legal stability of granted patents is uncertain, a fact that entails inefficiencies for the patentee as for third parties. It is an important question for intellectual property policy and management how severe this problem is. Few patents are litigated, and those that are are not a random selection. We thus ask: if a randomly picked patent underwent revocation proceedings, what would be the...

The continuations procedure is intended to benefit “pioneering” inventors, but is allegedly related to the various strategic uses by firms of the U.S. patent system including “submarine patents,” “junk patents,” and patent “thickets.” The procedure is hence the subject of several past and proposed patent policy reforms. Yet, very little is known about how applicants exploit differences in the m...

Patents on the new technology–a technology not yet commercialized and in an early stage of its life cycle–give firms many benefits. However, existing methods are inadequate because of dependencies on customers and physical prototypes. And there is lack of systems, focused on a problem identification process or an inter-technological comparison. In this research, to remedy existing limitations, ...

Amendment by Pub. L. 100–418 applicable, subject to certain qualifications and exceptions, to all United States patents, and to all licenses under section 184 of this title, regardless of the date such patents or licenses are granted, and to all applications for such patents pending on or filed after Aug. 23, 1988, see section 9101(d) of Pub. L. 100–418, set out as a note under section 184 of t...

This research suggests a framework to identify promising research frontiers through patent map. Core patents are extracted from a list of patents, using collected patent information. The research frontiers are identified by conducting clustering core patents. Patent map is generated through principle component analysis and network analysis. The promising research frontiers and promising researc...