LA STRUTTURA DELL¿INNOVAZIONE BIOTECH COSTRUZIONE E ANALISI DI UNA BANCA DATI BREVETTUALE ORIGINALE 1980-2010
Tesi di Dottorato
Data di Pubblicazione:
2011
Citazione:
LA STRUTTURA DELL¿INNOVAZIONE BIOTECH COSTRUZIONE E ANALISI DI UNA BANCA DATI BREVETTUALE ORIGINALE 1980-2010 / V. Ventura ; tutor: D.G.Frisio. Universita' degli Studi di Milano, 2011 Dec 22. 23. ciclo, Anno Accademico 2011.
Abstract:
In the last decades, the structure of agricultural input industries has changed very rapidly. Private sector investment in agricultural and food research and development (R&D) has grown dramatically, while public-sector investments remained relatively constant. Private-sector plant breeding has been the fastest growing segment of the private research portfolio. Mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances, and some divestiture have characterized the sector (Shoemaker et al., 2001). The number of patents of agricultural innovation has increased as a reaction to both the intervention of the private sector and its needs of intellectual property rights, and the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, which enabled universities to patent results of research financed with federal funds (Yancey and Stewart, 2007). Research and development in the agricultural sector was traditionally provided by public research institutions (Alston et al., 2001), but the recent introduction of innovative research tools and technologies, usually owned by private firms, allowed them to become the leading actor in agricultural inputs production. Among new technologies, biotechnologies have many applications in agriculture, including
diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics for animal health, DNA fingerprinting, marker assisted selection, intragenics and genetic engineering to develop genetically modified (GM) plants (Beuzekom and Arundel, 2009). Over the past decades, scientific discoveries in agricultural biotechnology accelerated and the use of patents and other intellectual property rights (IPRs) instruments increased proportionally to the number of final agbiotech products on the markets.
Patents are a functional information tool to study changes, development and transfer of agricultural input innovations. Several studies examined the role of patents in the developmentand use of plant biotechnologies (i.e. plant transformationtechniques and structural genomics) showing that patents are important in inducing private firms to develop these platform technologies. Patent protection boosted the commercialization of many GM varieties. The impact of IP protection on public research appears ambiguous. Some authors suggest that the adoption of IP protection instruments gives public research institutes the opportunity to raise funding and provides incentives to researchers to produce innovations. Moreover, although the use of IPRs may seem to be in conflict with the traditional role of universities, which is to create, sustain and disseminate knowledge as a public good, it may be a way to increase social welfare. Maredia et al. (1999) argue that IP protection can be compatible with the mission of public organizations, especially in those cases where private firms underinvest in R&D due to small markets, high R&D costs and technological complexity. Starting from the seminal work of Schmookler (1966), which exploited patent statistics in the study of economic growth, several other authors suggested the analysis of patents as an economic indicator. Commanor and Scherer (1969) examined a panel of pharmaceutical firms and found a positive relation between patents and two measures of technicalchange, namely new product introduction and number of persons employed in research activity . They also suggested the use of
patent data as measure of research input rather than output. Griliches et al. (1986) confirmed the relationship between R&D expenditures and patent applications, performing a wide survey on the value of patents as indicators of inventive activity. They concluded that patents data represent a valuable resource for the analysis of technological change, especially in the cross-sectional
dimension. Griliches (1990) found a strong relationship betweenpatent numbers and R&D expen
Tipologia IRIS:
Tesi di dottorato
Elenco autori:
V. Ventura
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