Which articles and which topics in the forensic sciences are most highly cited?

Forensic science is a multidisciplinary field, which covers many branches of the pure, the applied and the biomedical sciences. Writing-up and publishing research findings helps to enhance the reputation of the investigators and the laboratories where the work was done. The number of times an article is cited in the reference lists of other articles is generally accepted as a mark of distinction. Indeed, citation analysis has become widely used in research assessment of individual scientists, university departments and entire nations. This article concerns the most highly cited papers published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences (JFS) between 1956 and 2005. These were identified with the help of Web-of-Science, which is the on-line version of Science Citation Index, produced by Thomson Institute for Scientific Information (Thomson ISI) with head offices in Philadelphia, USA. This database tracks, among other things, the annual citation records of articles published in several thousand scientific journals worldwide. Those JFS articles accumulating 50 or more citations were identified and rank-ordered according to the total number of citations. These articles were also evaluated according to the name of first author, the subject category of the article, the country of origin and the pattern of co-authorship. This search strategy located 46 articles cited between 50 and 292 times since they first appeared in print. The most highly cited paper by far was by Kasai, Nakamura and White (USA and Japan) concerning DNA profiling and the application of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in forensic science. Some forensic scientists appeared as first author on two to three highly cited articles, namely Wetli (USA), Budowle (USA) and Comey (USA). When the highly cited articles were sub-divided into subject category, 15 were identified as coming from toxicology, closely followed by criminalistics (14 articles), pathology (nine articles), physical anthropology (five articles), forensic psychiatry (two articles) and one from odontology. The number of co-authors on these highly cited articles ranged from one to nine and the names of some investigators appeared on as many as four highly cited papers. The vast majority of papers originated from US laboratories although five came from Japan, two each from Sweden and Canada and there was also a joint USA-Swiss collaboration. The Thompson ISI citation databases provide unique tools for tracking citations to individual articles and impact and citation records of scholarly journals.     

The nexus between science and industry: evidence from faculty inventions

Knowledge transfer from science to industry has been shown to be beneficial for the corporate partner. In order to get a better understanding of the reasons behind these positive effects, this study focuses on the junction of science and industry by comparing characteristics of academic inventions that are transferred to industry and those staying in the public sector. Academic inventions are identified via patent applications of German academic scientists. We find that academic patents assigned to corporations are more likely to enable firms reaping short term rather than, possibly more uncertain, long-run returns, in contrast to patents that stay in the public sector. Firms also strive for academic inventions with a high blocking potential in technology markets. Academic patents issued to corporations appear to reflect less complex inventions as compared to inventions that are patented by the public science sector.     

University reputation and technology commercialization: evidence from nanoscale science

We study how the scientific reputations and technology transfer policies of universities affect patenting by university researchers, with particular regard to whether they assign patent ownership to their university or to an outside firm. Using data on the career output of over 33,000 researchers in nanosciences, we find a strongly positive relationship of university reputation in nanosciences with the number of university-assigned patents, but almost a negligible association with firm-assignment of patents. University technology transfer office resources are related positively to both types of patents, but with diminishing returns. In contrast, the share of license revenue offered upfront to researchers is positively associated with university-assigned patents, but negatively related to firm-assigned patents. Taken together, our results suggest that universities that streamline their technology transfer efforts and improve their research reputation through support for basic research will see long-term success in technology commercialization.     

Sustainability of patent-based competitive advantage in the U.S. communications services industry

Patents have long been assumed to provide firms with competitive advantage, but longitudinal results suggest that some types of patent content provide more enduring advantage than others do. The duration of advantage appeared to wane with time in the highly-dynamic U.S. communications-services industry during a period when technological changes occurred rapidly within it (1998–2012). Results suggest patents integrating technology streams that were different from the technologies of focal-patents’ grants contributed more to sustaining firms’ profit margins during this period than did focal patents that exploited extant technological knowledge. We found that firms who continually pushed their organization’s knowledge envelope outward to incorporate more unknown technologies sustained higher profit margins for a longer duration of time than did firms whose patented inventions were predominantlyincremental—even within difficult settings where competition grew so intense that firms’ average operating margins were deteriorating.     

Patenting nanotechnology

Universities and companies are rushing to the patent office in record numbers to patent nanotechnology inventions. This rush to the patent office is so significant that many law firms have established nanotechnology practice groups and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has now created a new technology class designed to track nanotechnology products. Three big differences between the emerging science of nanotechnology and other inventions make the role of patents more significant in this arena than elsewhere. First, this is almost the first new field in a century in which the basic ideas are being patented at the outset. In many of the most important fields of invention over the past century--computer hardware, software, the Internet, even biotechnology--the basic building blocks of the field were either unpatented or the patents were made available to all users by government regulation. In others, patents were delayed by interferences for so long that the industry developed free from their influence. In nanotechnology, by contrast, companies and universities alike are patenting early and often. A second factor distinguishing nanotechnology is its unique cross-industry structure. Unlike other new industries, in which the patentees are largely actual or at least potential participants in the market, a significant number of nanotechnology patentees will own rights not just in the industry in which they participate, but in other industries as well. This overlap may significantly affect their incentives to license the patents. Finally, a large number of the basic nanotechnology patents have been issued to universities, which have become far more active in patenting in the last twenty-five years. While universities have no direct incentive to restrict competition, their interests may or may not align with the optimal implementation of building-block nanotechnology inventions. The result is a nascent market in which a patent thicket is in theory a serious risk. Whether it will prove a problem in practice depends in large part on how efficient the licensing market turns out to be.     

美国专利侵权损害赔偿中的分摊规则问题

在专利侵权损害赔偿确定中,以侵权产品的总价值中可归功于被侵权专利技术的贡献确定专利侵权损害赔偿的分摊规则,有助于解决全部市场价值规则所导致的过度赔偿及专利权排他权非法扩张等问题。美国一百多年相关实践对分摊规则进行了有益探索,我国应借鉴美国的经验对专利侵权损害赔偿制度进行完善。     

Patent first, ask questions later: morality and biotechnology in patent law

This Article explores the U.S. "patent first, ask questions later" approach to determining what subject matter should receive patent protection. Under this approach, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO or the Agency) issues patents on "anything under the sun made by man," and to the extent a patent's subject matter is sufficiently controversial, Congress acts retrospectively in assessing whether patents should issue on such interventions. This practice has important ramifications for morally controversial biotechnology patents specifically, and for American society generally. For many years a judicially created "moral utility" doctrine served as a type of gatekeeper of patent subject matter eligibility. The doctrine allowed both the USTPO and courts to deny patents on morally controversial subject matter under the fiction that such inventions were not "useful." The gate, however, is currently untended. A combination of the demise of the moral utility doctrine, along with expansive judicial interpretations of the scope of patent-eligible subject matter, has resulted in virtually no basis on which the USTPO or courts can deny patent protection to morally controversial, but otherwise patentable, subject matter. This is so despite position statements by the Agency to the contrary. Biotechnology is an area in which many morally controversial inventions are generated. Congress has been in react-mode following the issuance of a stream of morally controversial biotech patents, including patents on transgenic animals, surgical methods, and methods of cloning humans. With no statutory limits on patent eligibility, and with myriad concerns complicating congressional action following a patent's issuance, it is not Congress, the representative of the people, determining patent eligibility. Instead, it is patent applicants, scientific inventors, who are deciding matters of high public policy through the contents of the applications they file with the USTPO. This Article explores how the United States has come to be in this position, exposes latent problems with the "patent first" approach, and considers the benefits and disadvantages of the "ask questions first, patents later" approaches employed by some other countries. The Article concludes that granting patents on morally controversial biotech subject matter and then asking whether such inventions should be patentable is bad policy for the United States and its patent system, and posits workable, proactive ways for Congress to successfully guard the patent-eligibility gate.     

专利侵权赔偿中的技术分摊难题——从美国废除专利侵权“非法获利”赔偿说起

在确定专利侵权的损害赔偿数额时，要把可归因于覆盖专利技术特征的那部分产品价值从产品整体价值中分摊出来，这可称为技术分摊规则。美国废除专利侵权中非法获利赔偿这一反常做法，引出专利法上的一个重要命题：技术分摊不可能性。在所失利润赔偿计算中，美国用市场分析法代替技术特征法，从而淡化技术分摊规则，扩张了全部市场价值规则。我国法院在审判实践中运用了技术分摊规则，但没有法律依据，这一现象亟待规范。     

Licensing versus selling in transactions for exploiting patented technological knowledge assets in the markets for technology

This paper examines the determinants of the types of technology transactions in the markets for technology. On the basis of the relationship between the characteristics of a firm’s patents and the firm’s decision on whether to license out or sell these patented technologies, we empirically analyze the determinants of the decision. We employ interlocked patent data from the representative Korean market for technology, the National Technology Bank, using a bivariate probit regression model in a theoretical framework that includes the option and transaction cost perspectives. Overall, the results show that the relationship between licensing and selling, the major alternatives in technology transactions, is strongly substitutive. The major finding of this study is that firms in markets for technology tend to prefer licensing their patents when uncertainty is low or transaction cost is high, whereas they tend to prefer selling their patents under opposite conditions.     

The Use of USPTO “Continuation” Applications in the Patenting of Software: Implications for Free and Open Source*

This paper examines the role played by “continuations” (procedural revisions of patent applications) within software patenting and the implications that the use by patentees of continuations has for free and open‐source software design. Our research analyzes data on continuations in software patenting 1987–99, providing information on the effects of changes made to the U.S. patent laws in 1995 intended to curb “submarine patenting.” Our analysis of all U.S. patents issued 1987–99 shows that the use of continuations grew steadily in overall U.S. patenting through 1995, with particularly rapid growth in continuations in software patenting. Sharp reversals in these growth rates after 1995 suggest that changes in the U.S. patent law were effective. We analyze the role of continuation patents in creating opportunities for patentees to engage in strategic “hold‐up” of software adopters and follow‐on software innovators, and extend the analysis to open‐source software.     

Privacy Act of 1974; proposed major alterations to an existing system of records--Public Health Service. Notice of proposed major alterations

In accordance with the requirements of the Privacy Act, the Public Health Service (PHS) is publishing a notice proposing major alterations in the Privacy Act system of records entitled "Grants Act system of records entitled "Grants: Research, Research Training, Research Scientist Development, Education, Demonstration, Fellowships, Clinical Training, Community Services, Cooperation Agreements, "HHS/ADAMHA/OA, 09-03-0027. The system contains the official documentation of the grant programs of the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration (ADAMHA). The proposed alterations are necessary to ensure compliance with recently added provisions in the Public Health Service Act (PHSA). Section 303 (42 U.S.C 242a), concerning clinical training awardees' payback obligations.     

Exploring the Patent Explosion

This paper looks more closely at the sources of patent growth in the United States since 1984. It confirms that the increase is largely due to U.S. patenters, with an earlier surge in Asia, and some increase in Europe. Growth has taken place in all technologies, but not in all industries, being concentrated in the electrical, electronics, computing, and scientific instruments industries. It then examines whether these patents are valued by the market. We know from survey evidence that patents in these industries are not usually considered important for appropriability, but are sometimes considered necessary to secure financing for entering the industry. I compare the market value of patents held by entrant firms to those held by incumbents (controlling for R&D). Using data on publicly traded firms 1980--1989, I find that in industries based on electrical and mechanical technologies the market value of entrants' patents is positive in the post-1984 period (after the patenting surge), but not before, when patents were relatively unimportant in these industries. Also, the value of patent rights in complex product industries (where each product relies on many patents held by a number of other firms) is much higher for entrants than incumbents in the post-1984 period. For discrete product industries (where each product relies on only a few patents, and where the importance of patents for appropriability has traditionally been higher), there is no difference between incumbents and entrants.     

Idea generation: the performance of U.S. States 1997–2007

Regional prosperity increasingly depends on a region’s capacity to have command over the production of ideas. Measuring the production of ideas with patents, the objective of this paper is to analyze how the number of utility patents granted to inventors in U.S. States in different technologies changed between 1997 and 2007 and how States took advantage of the new opportunities and adapted to the changing technology landscape. The paper uses shift-share analysis, traditionally used in employment studies, for analyzing change in patents by technology categories developed by the NBER. The shift-share results show that only a few states were able to take advantage of the information technology driven increases in patents. California dominates in patent production and may be providing spillover benefits to neighboring states. The shift-share decompositions are used as variables in a fixed-effect panel-regression model of state economic growth. The regression results show that the shift-share decompositions provide statistically significant information in explaining growth after accounting for a State’s stock of patents, suggesting that States should concentrate on effective ways to boost their stock of knowledge in rapidly growing technologies to improve state economic growth.     

The contractual alternative to patents

A patent grants the holder a monopoly over the use of the patented invention for a specified time period. Although economists are generally opposed to monopoly, there seems to be a general consensus that the patent system is desirable.¹ The rationale for the patent system is that without ownership rights in inventions, there would not be optimal allocation of resources to inventive activities, just as with any other valuable resource over which there are not well-defined property rights. However, the patent system, since it confers monopoly rights, has its drawbacks as well. If independent parties are working simultaneously toward an invention, the first to produce the invention will receive a monopoly over its use, even though others may have been only a month behind. This may encourage inventors to work too intensively toward a patent, and could also have the effect of producing monopoly in a market that was characterized by competition before the patent was issued. In addition, competitors have an incentive to develop substitute processes to avoid infringement of the patent, when the use of the patented process would be more economical. A substitute for patents which provides ownership rights in an invention without governmental grant of a monopoly is the trade secret. The purpose of this paper is to introduce and develop the idea of the law of trade secrets as a contractual alternative to patents.     

Software patents in the United States: A balanced approach

This paper tracks the interesting journey of software patents in the United States from both a historic and current standpoint. The U.S patent system has drifted from being strict in the 1970s to being fairly lenient in 1990s and now again strict since 2007. The revolutionizing and famous Bilski case that is redefining the boundaries of software patents is described, and the impact of this Court case on software patents is discussed. The challenges in issuing software patents in terms of proving novelty and non-obviousness are presented in an attempt to bring forward some of the questions in the software patent debate. The uniqueness of software as an invention is analyzed to understand why software should be considered differently compared to other industries. The advantages and disadvantages of software patents are discussed. The paper concludes by providing recommendations and proposing a balanced approach to software patents.     

美国专利蟑螂的新近立法评析及其启示

专利蟑螂已经成为美国专利制度中一个十分严峻的问题,美国政府不断出台专利法修订草案和政策,意图遏制专利蟑螂,并取得了不错的成效。然而,从近期美国参众两院提交的诸项法案来看,尽管存在分歧,但其整体立场已经发生明显转变,倾向于优待专利蟑螂。由此,以设立双方复审程序、提高禁令颁发标准以及限制司法管辖为代表的诸多重要专利司法改革成果,都将可能遭到弱化。结合美国的经验教训,我国应当尽早认识专利蟑螂并着手应对,从考察开放许可专利实施情况、增加"权利人商业模式"作为判赔考量因素、细化司法管辖规则、完善专利无效制度以及构建全面打击专利假冒行为制度等多个维度,预防和遏制专利蟑螂。     

假冒专利罪疑难问题探讨

假冒专利罪保护的法益是超个人法益,因此,假冒并不存在的他人的专利,以及未获专利却谎称已获专利的行为,构成假冒专利罪;非法实施他人专利的专利侵权行为,从应然的角度讲,应纳入刑法规制的范畴,但从现行立法规定来看,无法以假冒专利罪定罪处罚;在生产、销售的伪劣商品上假冒专利,或者还假冒他人注册商标的,均应数罪并罚;专利权的刑法保护以选择集中型和散在型相结合的立法模式为宜。     

Privacy Act of 1974; altered system of records--PHS. Notification of altered Privacy Act system of records 09-25-0074

In accordance with the requirements of the Privacy Act, the Public Health Service (PHS) is publishing notice of a proposal to alter system of records 09-25-0074, "Clinical Research: Veterans Administration Bladder and Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials, HHS/NIH/NCI." The purpose of the alteration is to modify an existing system of records into an umbrella system by broadening both the categories of individuals under this system and the purposes for which the system is used. The names of the system of records is also being changed to reflect the alteration. The new name is "Clinical Research: Division of Cancer Biology and Diagnosis Patient Trials, HHS/NIH/NCI."     

The private value of patents by patent characteristics: evidence from Finland

I use renewal rates and fees to estimate the private value of Finnish patents by patent characteristic. I disaggregate the value estimations by applicant, patent breadth, and technology. Firm patents are 1.5 times more valuable than patents owned by individuals. This holds also when controlling for technology and breadth. There are large differences in values between technologies but in contrast to the usual assumption made in the theoretical literature, broader patents are not necessarily more valuable than narrower ones. Patent value is skewed and therefore the number of patents should be weighted by an index when measuring technological change. I construct this index for Finnish patents and find that renewing a patent one more year signals a 1.5 times more valuable patent.      

PATENT HOLDUP AND OLIGOPSONISTIC COLLUSION IN STANDARD-SETTING ORGANIZATIONS

Current controversies over patent policy place standard-settingorganizations (SSOs) on a collision course with antitrust law.Recent theoretical research conjectures that, in an SSO, patentowners can "hold up" patent users in the sense of demandinghigh royalties for a patented input after the SSO has adoptedthe patented technology as an industry standard and manufacturerswithin the SSO have incurred sunk costs to design end productsthat incorporate that standard. Consistent with this conjecture,actual SSOs have recently sought no-action letters from theAntitrust Division for a variety of amendments to SSO rulesthat would require or request, at the time a standard is underconsideration, the ex ante disclosure by the patent owner ofthe maximum royalty that the patent owner would charge underthe regime of fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory licensing.This price information—which is characterized as the "cost"of the patented input—would, under at least one recentSSO rule modification, be a permissible topic for potentialusers of the patent to discuss when deciding whether to selectit in lieu of some alternative standard. This exchange of informationamong horizontal competitors would occur ostensibly becausethe cost of the patented technology had been characterized assimply one more technical attribute of the standard to be set,albeit an important technical attribute. The Antitrust Divisionand the Federal Trade Commission have jointly stated that suchdiscussion, by prospective buyers who are competitors in thedownstream market, of the price of a patented invention thatmight become part of an industry standard should be subjectto antitrust scrutiny under the rule of reason rather than therule of per se illegality. The rationale that the antitrustagencies offer for applying the rule of reason to such conductis that such horizontal collaboration might avert patent holdup.The Antitrust Modernization Commission (AMC) similarly endorsedthe view that rule-of-reason analysis is appropriate for exante discussion of royalty terms by competing buyers of patentedtechnology. This rule-of-reason approach, however, is problematicbecause it conflicts with both the body of economic researchon bidder collusion and with the antitrust jurisprudence oninformation exchange and facilitation of collusion. Put differently,because of their concern over the possibility of patent holdup,the U.S. antitrust agencies and the AMC in effect have indicatedthat they may be willing in at least some circumstances to forgoenforcement actions against practices that facilitate oligopsonisticcollusion by encouraging the ex ante exchange of informationamong competitors concerning the price to be paid for a patentedinput as an implicit condition of those competitors' endorsementof that particular patented technology for adoption in the industrystandard. However, neither the proponents of these SSO policiesnor the antitrust agencies and the AMC have offered any theoreticalor empirical foundation for their implicit assumption that theexpected social cost of patent holdup exceeds the expected socialcost of oligopsonistic collusion. This conclusion does not changeeven if one conjectures that such collusion will benefit consumersby enabling licensees to pass through royalty reductions intheir pricing of the downstream product incorporating the patentedtechnology. Proper economic evaluation of the plausibility ofthe pass-through conjecture will require information about thecalculation of royalty payments; the demand and supply elasticitiesfacing the licensees; and the structure of any industries furtherdownstream between the manufacturer and the final consumer.Consequently, the magnitude of this effect will likely be amatter of empirical dispute in every case. Moreover, such ajustification for tolerating horizontal price fixing finds nosupport in antitrust jurisprudence. Given the analytical andfactual uncertainty over whether patent holdup is a seriousproblem, it is foreseeable that antitrust questions of firstimpression will arise and affect a wide range of high-technologyindustries that rely on SSOs. However, there is no indicationthat scholars and policy makers have seriously considered whetheroligopsonistic collusion in SSOs is a larger problem than patentholdup.