Timothy Simcoe and Christian Catalini

Firms typically want to know whether a technology is covered by Intellectual Property (IP) rights before making it an industry standard. To promote transparency, Standard Setting Organizations require participants to disclose their IP during technical deliberations. We study the effectiveness of these policies. Specifically, we examine a large sample of IP disclosures and find that these declarations are often not very informative. The majority of disclosure statements do not list any specific piece of IP, or offer information on pricing beyond a commitment to license on “reasonable and non-discriminatory” terms. We also link the disclosure data to administrative records from the Internet Engineering Task Force, and find that unless there is a commitment to royalty-free licensing, disclosures reduce the probability that a proposal becomes a standard. Thus, while many firms remain reluctant to reveal IP, under the right conditions disclosure policies seem able to promote ex ante technological competition within SSOs.  

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Tracing the links between science and technology: An exploratory analysis of scientists’ and inventors’ networks

(Stefano Breschi and Christian Catalini)
Research Policy, 2010 - Vol 39 - Issue 1, pp. 14-26

The paper provides an exploratory analysis of the research networks linking scientists working in an open science environment, and researchers involved in the private technology domain. The study combines data on scientific co-authorship with data on patent co-invention, at the level of individual researchers, for three science-intensive technology fields, i.e. lasers, semiconductors and biotechnology, in order to assess the extent of the overlap between the two communities and to identify the role of key individuals in the process of knowledge transfer. Our findings reveal that the extent of the connectedness among scientists and inventors is rather large, and that particular individuals, i.e. authors-inventors, who act as gatekeepers and bridge the boundaries between the two domains, are fundamental to ensuring this connectivity. These individuals tend to occupy prominent positions in the scientific and the technological networks. However, our results also show maintaining a very central position in the scientific network may come at the expense of being able to fill a similarly central position in a technological network (and vic

e versa). Finally, preliminary analysis of the institutional origins of authors-inventors shows that one characteristic, distinctive of Europe compared to the United States, is 

associated with the relatively lower involvement of corporate scientists at the intersection between the two worlds of science and technology.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2009.11.004

Tracing the linkages between science and technology: An exploratory analysis of the research networks among scientists and inventors. - Working Paper version (Stefano Breschi and Christian Catalini)
The aim of this paper is to provide an empirical exploratory analysis of the research networks linking scientists engaged in the world of open science and researchers involved in the domain of private technology. To this purpose, the study combines in an original way data on scientific co-authorship and data on patent co-invention at the level of individual researchers for three science intensive technology fields, i.e. lasers, semiconductors and biotechnology, in order to assess the extent of overlap between the two communities and to identify the role of key individuals in the process of knowledge transfer. Download here

The link between science and technology: exploring the network of inventors and scientific authors in the semiconductor industry
The interaction between science and technology (S&T) is a complex and heterogeneous process. Knowledge flows between the communities of “Open Science” and “Proprietary technology” are usually local in terms of technological, geographical or social proximity. The aim of this study is to quantify knowledge spillovers between S&T, using the bibliographic references contained in patents as “paper trails”. Patent documents and cited scientific articles are used to build a comprehensive social network of authors and inventors in the semiconductor industry. The networks of discovery and invention are then related in order to analyze the mechanisms underlying the diffusion of new information. Individuals who are both scientific authors and inventors act as technological gatekeepers, reconciling the different incentive schemes and interests of S&T. Authors-inventors are influential people in the network: they actually control most of the knowledge flows between different groups, are more connected and if removed, significantly increase the average social distance between the others. The interplay between geography and social distance is further investigated in a regression framework, so as to estimate the effect of social ties and geographical distance on the probability of a citation from a patent to a scientific article. The results indicate that social networks are indeed an effective diffusion vehicle for new knowledge and can help overcome geographical distance. Linked individuals are able to exchange complex and tacit knowledge even without being co-located in the same place, as they have developed the common vocabulary that makes them a “community of experts”. Download here - You can browse the html version here

Highly Cited Patents, Highly Cited Publications, and Research Networks (Stefano Breschi, Gianluca Tarasconi, Christian Catalini, Lorenzo Novella, Paolo Guatta, Hrannar Johnson) - 2006
This report presents the main results of a study, Highly Cited Patents, Highly Cited Publications, and Research Networks, conducted for the European Commission by the Centre for Research on Innovation and Internationalization (CESPRI) of Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Milan. The study purported to appraise the existence and the importance of social network linkages between the authors of scientific publications cited in patents (i.e. scientists) and the generators of patented inventions (i.e. inventors). The study focused upon five technology fields, characterised by high degrees of science intensity as measured by the average number of citations to scientific publications per patent, and by high growth rates in the number of patent applications. Download here 

Open Source: the square governance
The history of Open Source is closely tied to the development of the Internet and the way it is changing the rules of competition in the software sector. Based on code written by hackers1 in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the Net has been a major driver of innovation in the software development governance, as it created new incentives, conditions for coordination and monitoring. This “enhanced” economics allows at the same time rent-seeking and donator approaches, disclosure and secrecy, low appropriability conditions and innovative behavior. Download here