Patent systems and innovation.

As part of a major project on Industrial Technology and Productivity sponsored by the Sloan Foundation (described at www.nber.org/sloan), the NBER organized a research project on Patent Systems and Innovation, directed by Adam B. Jaffe, NBER and Brandeis University, Jenny O. Lanjouw, NBER and Yale University, and Joshua Lerner, NBER and Harvard University. The results were presented at a conference on January 8 and 9 in the following papers:

Lee G. Branstetter, NBER and University of California, Davis, and Mariko Sakakibara, University of California, Los Angeles, "The Effect of Patent Systems on Firm Innovation: Evidence from the 1988 Japanese Patent Law Reforms"

Discussants: Wesley M. Cohen, NBER and Carnegie-Mellon University, and Jeffrey Kushan, Powell, Goldstein, Frazer, and Murphy

Mark Schankerman, London School of Economics, and Suzanne A. Scotchmer, NBER and University of California, Berkeley, "Damages and Injunctions in the Protection of Proprietary Research Tools"

Discussants: Katharine Ku, Office of Technology Licensing, and Brian N. Wright, University of California, Berkeley

Iain M. Cockburn, NBER and University of British Columbia, and Jenny O. Lanjouw, "Do Patents Matter? Empirical Evidence after GATT"

Discussants: Rebecca Henderson, NBER and MIT, and James Schuttinga, National Institutes of Health

Adam B. Jaffe and Joshua Lerner, "Privatizing R&D: Patent Policy and the Commercialization of National Laboratory Technologies"

Discussants: Linda Cohen, University of California, h-vine, and Sam Petuchowski, Bromberg and Sunstein LLP

Bronwyn H. Hall, NBER and University of California, Berkeley, and Rose Marie Ham, University of California, Berkeley, "The Patent Paradox Revisited: Firm Strategy and Patenting in the U.S. Semiconductor Industry"

Discussant: Adam B. Jaffe

2. Zorina Khan, Bowdoin College, "Legal Monopoly: Patents and Antitrust Litigation in U.S. Manufacturing, 1970-98"

Discussants: Carl Shapiro, University of California, Berkeley: and Dan Wall, McCutchen, Doyle, Brown, and Enersen

Naomi R. Lamoreaux and Kenneth L. Sokoloff, NBER and University of California, Los Angeles, "The Market in Patented Technologies and Patterns of Inventive Activity in Historical Perspective"

Discussants: Michael Fogarty, Case Western Reserve University, and Joshua Lerner

Hugo Hopenhayn, Universidad Torcuato di Tella, and Mattew F. Mitchell, University of Minnesota, "Innovation Fertility and Patent Design"

Discussants: Nancy Gallinni...