A new approach to measuring time-lags in technology licensing: study of U.S. academic research institutions

This paper contributes to measurement of licensing performance of U.S. research institutions by suggesting an approach for identifying time-lags in the licensing process. Licensing is a multi-state process starting with a disclosure, and resulting in intermediate outcomes such as patents, licensing agreements, and licensing income. The time duration among these variables is critical in understanding which investment is responsible for which outcome. This study develops a statistic procedure estimating time-lag coefficients among licensing variables using an unstructured regression model (OLS). The procedure is applied to 46 U.S. academic research institutions using the licensing survey data from 1991 to 2007 by Association of University Technology Manager. The results present individual time-lag relationships between each pair of licensing variables.     

Lost in the Semiotic Maze: Empirical Approaches to Proof of Blurring in Trademark Dilution Law

One of the most interesting and possibly disturbing developments in U.S. trademark law in recent decades is the rise of a federal remedy for trademark dilution. Dilution law in theory provides a remedy for owners of famous trademarks when others use similar marks in ways that blur or tarnish the famous mark. This article focuses on attempts by courts and scholars to formulate a methodology for proving this elusive cause of action. The article offers a history of dilution regulation and analyzes and critiques representative empirical approaches to proving dilution, with a focus on dilution by blurring.     

Opposition or cooperation: the relationships between lawyers and non-lawyer professionals in the US, 1999–2008

Despite longstanding scholarly attention to professions in the US, the relationships between lawyers and non-lawyer professionals are not well explained. Socio-legal studies and studies of professions often take for granted conflicts as the nature of inter-professional relationships. However, this understanding ignores the possibility of cooperation in which a set of professional occupations jointly attains a limited supply of necessary resources. Based on the ecological concepts of interactions and environments, the author discusses the impact of non-lawyer professions on the population of lawyers in an attempt to understand the relationships between the occupational groups. Using the panel data model to test data from 50 US states and the District of Columbia over a 10-year period, the study reveals that the legal profession is in cooperation with professionals in financial and law-affiliated areas. The analysis of ecological interactions moves beyond conflict-oriented understanding of professional occupations, and further, exhorts for the exploration of various forms of inter-professional relationships.