Chapter 9 - Protecting innovation Flashcards
1
Q
Why and how protecting technological innovations?
A
- helps retain control
- appropriate rents from its use
- wide range of protection mechanisms available
- from wholly proprietary to wholly open
1
Q
Why and how protecting technological innovations?
A
- helps retain control
- appropriate rents from its use
- wide range of protection mechanisms available
- from wholly proprietary to wholly open
2
Q
What is appropriability?
A
- the degree to which a firm is able to capture the rents from its innovation
- determined by how easily or quickly competitors can copy the innovation
- tacit, socially complex -> difficult to copy
- protection through patents, copyrights or trade secrets
3
Q
What are the differences between patents, trademarks and copyrights?
A
- each protect intellectual property but for different things
- patents -> inventions
- excludes others from producing, using, or selling an invention
- must be useful, novel, and not be obvious
- trademarks -> distinctive words or symbols
- copyrights -> original artistic or literary work
4
Q
Types of patents?
A
- utility patents
- new and useful processes, machines, items
- 1998 software algorithms
- design patents
- protect original and ornamental designs
- plant patents
- protect distinct new varieties of plants
5
Q
Is the patent process uniform?
A
- no, countries have their own laws
- Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property
- same patent rights in each member country
- right of priority, apply for protection in others same date
- Patent Cooperation Treaty (P C T)
- right to apply in more than 150 countries for up to 2 ½ year
6
Q
What are the stages for patent approval?
A
- three tests
- usefulness
- novelty
- not obvious
- patent application
- submission of drawings, explanation of use and description of structure
- submission of materials followed by a review and a publication period (rights to challenge patent)
- not approved:
- discovery of natural law scientific principles
- material substitution or equivalent elements
- change size or make something more portable
- shape alteration
- printed materials
7
Q
Why patenting an application?
A
- desire to make and sell the invention themselves
- monetize patents in various ways
- licensing technology
- selling patent’s rights
- monetize patents
8
Q
What is patent trolling?
A
- earn revenues through aggressive patent lawsuits
9
Q
What are patent tickets?
A
- a set of overlaaping or closely related patents
- can make competition hard and stifle innovation
- firms can buy bundles of patents just to create a war chest
- defend from lawsuits threatening retaliation
10
Q
Trademarks
A
- indicator used to distinguish the source of goods
- rights to trademark do not require registration
- necessary for lawsuits
- registration establishes international rights
- two treaties
- Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks
- Madrid protocol
11
Q
Copyrights
A
- protection granted to works of authorship
- no reproducing
- no used as base
- no distribution of copies
- no public display
- can be used for as criticism, new reporting, teaching research
- after 1978 -> protection for author’s life plus 70 years
- law varies from country to country
- Berne Union for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Property, mimimun level of protection, eliminates differentia rights (citizen vs not)
12
Q
Trade Secrets
A
- information that belongs to a business that is generally unknown to others
- proprietary product or process
- no disclosing detailed information required in patents
- broad class of assets and activities
- not generally known or ascertainable
- must offer a distinctive advantage to firm
- secret holder must have measures to rotect secrecy
13
Q
How much effective are protection mechanism?
A
- in some industries they are more effective
- pharmaceutical
- difficult to protect manufacturing processes and techniques
- in some cases diffusing a technology may be more lavuable than protecting it
- but control difficult to reclaim
14
Q
Wholly proprietary or wholly open?
A
- wholly proprietary -> only by their developers
- wholly open -> freely accessed, augmented and distributed by anyone
- many technologies are in-between
