The present Master thesis was written during an internship at Deutsche Post DHL Solutions& Innovations, a subsidiary of Deutsche Post DHL. The main purpose was to make a patent portfolio benchmark for the previously identified business competitors of the DPDHL group. The research questions aimed to find out how relevant the patent portfolio analysis is for comparing competitors and whether or not the results can be matched with other types of rankings. The benchmark was made using the PatentSight software tool. PatentSight allows the patent portfolio analysis of individual companies as well as groups of companies (competitors). The software tool is based on a new approach to benchmark patent portfolios called Patent Asset Index. This approach uses several indicators to measure the patent portfolios strengths. The indicators are based on relatively widely used measures of patent analysis such as the number of citations that a patent has received. However, these measures are further adjusted by the PatentSight indicators in order to prevent false results due to the difference in patents’ ages, for instance. The results of the patent portfolio benchmark and their comparison with other rankings have confirmed previous research findings that the patent portfolio analysis is a useful tool which can remove uncertainties and provide new perspectives but cannot be used as single indicator of the competitors’ strength.

The use of positioning systems in a vehicle is a research intensive field. In the first part of this thesis an increase in new applications is disclosed through a mapping of patent documents on how positioning systems can support adaptive cruise control, gear changing systems and engine control. Many ideas are presented and explained and the ideas are valued. Furthermore, a new method for selective catalytic reduction (SCR) control using a positioning system is introduced. It is concluded that look-ahead control, where the vehicle position in relation to the upcoming road section is utilized could give better fuel efficiency, lower emissions and less brake, transmission and engine wear. In the second part of this thesis a real time test platform for predictive speed control algorithms has been developed and tested in a real truck. Previously such algorithms could only be simulated. In this thesis an algorithm which utilizes model predictive control (MPC) and dynamic programming (DP) been implemented and evaluated. An initial comparative fuel test shows a reduction in fuel consumption when the MPC algorithm is used.

This thesis comprises three essays on immigration, innovation, and trade. The first essay utilizes an enhanced gravity model to estimate the effect of lagged immigration waves on Canadian imports and exports, by province. Empirically, this model was tested using Canadian data on import and export flows to the top 40 countries of origin for immigrants to Canada based upon the composition of the most recent wave of immigrants. The results are consistent with previous studies, where immigrants increased both import and export trade flows. By adding the provincial immigrant wave variable, it was also found that new immigrants affect imports almost immediately, whereas for exports, the immigrant effect is not significant for at least 5 years and may take as long as 20 years to reach full impact.<p>The second essay utilizes an enhanced gravity model to estimate the effect of innovative capability on Canadian provincial exports to Canadas top 60 importing countries. Empirically, this model was tested using Canadian data on export flows to Canadas top 60 importing countries. The results are supportive of a provinces innovative capability leading to increased exports, where innovative capacity is measured by international patents, scientific journal articles, and R&D expenditures. For example, in terms of innovative capacity as measured by international (U.S.) patents, provinces with higher levels of international patents had higher levels of total exports, where this effect was greater for exports to developing versus developed countries. Furthermore, provincial R&D expenditures as well as the number of provincial scientific publications (in addition to provincial international patents) were found to be significant drivers in increasing the amount of provincial hi-tech exports to developed countries.<p>The third essay utilizes an augmented national ideas production function to examine skilled immigrants impact on Canadian innovation at the provincial level. Empirically, this model was tested using Canadian data by province on innovation flow over an 11 year time period, where innovation flow is defined in terms of international (U.S.) patents. It was found that skilled immigrants, who are proficient in either English or French, have a significant and positive impact on innovation flow in their home province. Further, in examining skilled immigrants by source region, it was found that skilled immigrants from developed countries have the greatest impact on their home provinces innovation flow. This is true of North American/European skilled immigrants for all skill-level categories including language proficiency, education, and immigrant class. For immigrants from developing countries, only highly educated Eastern Europeans and Low Income Asians classified as Independent Workers are both significant and positively related to their home provinces innovation flow.

<p>This paper provides support for the view that there should be a close link between inno-vation and export performance. In essence it is argued that successful exporting requires penetration of a market through an innovation process. For a small country like Sweden depending on production of knowledge intensive goods and product competition, to re-tain its international competitiveness, this notion is likely to hold true. Against this background an analysis aimed at testing to what extent Swedish export capacity can be determined by innovation is presented. In addition the factors perceived as influencing this capacity are identified and their relative importance is assessed. Specifically patent and R&D data are treated as the main proxies for innovation activity. Moreover the rela-tive export and innovation performance among the Swedish municipalities is analyzed. A spatial version of the product cycle model is introduced as it explicitly captures the process of innovation, relocation and export dynamics and forms a link to the succeed-ing theorizing. In particular it suggests that certain regions are more likely to be the lo-cation for innovative exporting firms due to advantageous intrinsic favorable attributes specific to these locations. In the specified model such attributes that are assumed to in-fluence export capacity in the Swedish municipalities are defined as local, intra- and in-terregional accessibility to research, average number of patents and density of employ-ment. Regression results suggest that accessibility to research from within the munici-pality exerts the principal effect on export and innovation capacity. Moreover the influ-ence of accessibility to industry R&D dominates over the university variable in both re-gressions, with total and per kilogram export value as dependents. In addition regional size exerts a rather strong positive effect on total export value.</p>

This thesis argues in favor of an instrumental approach to Intellectual Property (IP). I begin by reviewing justifications for IP that have been offered in recent literature, including Lockean labor theory, Hegelian personality theory, Kantian property theory and utilitarianism. Upon a close and careful analysis, I argue that none of these justifications suffice to ground contemporary IP practice. I review some recent works that offer `pluralist' justifications for IP, which draw from multiple theories in order to account for the diverse field of IP-related laws and practices in existence. I argue that these pluralist theories are also insufficient, because there is no principled reason why one theory is adopted over another in any particular case. In conclusion, I show that an instrumentalist attitude can best explain and justify IP laws and practices.

Design-by-Analogy is a powerful tool to augment the traditional methods of concept generation and offers avenues to develop innovative and novel design solutions. Few tools exist to assist designers in systematically seeking and identifying analogies from within design repositories such as the United States Patent and Trademark Office patent database. A new tool for extracting functional analogies from patents has been developed to perform this task utilizing a Vector Space Model algorithm to quantitatively evaluate the functional similarity between design problems and patent descriptions of products. Initially, a Boolean Search approach was evaluated and several limitations were identified such as a lack of quantitative metrics for determining search result relevancy ranking as well as inadequate query mapping methods. Next, a Vector Space Model search tool was developed which includes extensive expansion of the Functional Basis using human-based term classification and automated document indexing techniques. The resulting functional patent controlled vocabulary consists of approximately 2,100 unique functions extracted from 65,000 randomly selected patents. The patent search database was generated by indexing 275,000 patents selected from the over 4 million patents available in digital form. A graphical user interface was developed to facilitate query vector generation, and the accompanying search result viewing interface provides data clustering and relevancy ranking. Two case studies are conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the search engine. The first case study successfully replicated the functional similarity results of a classic Design-by-Analogy problem of the guitar pickup winder. The second case study is an original design problem consisting of an automated window washer, and the results illustrate the range of analogically distant solutions that can be extracted ranging from very near-field, literal solutions to the far-field cross domain solutions. Finally, the search tool’s efficacy with regard to increasing quantity and novelty of ideas produced during Concept Generation is experimentally evaluated. The two factors evaluated are first whether analogies improved performance and second how the functionality level of the analogy impacted performance. The experimental results showed an increase in novelty for high functionality analogies compared with the control and other experimental groups. No statistically significant difference was found with regard to quantity of ideas generated. / text

The prevailing metaphysics of modern medicine and bioethics have been largely dualistic and materialistic in nature. The person is conceived of as a duality of mind and body, where the body is treated simply as a material object. In taking such a perspective, the background is set from which people can come to feel distanced from their bodies and believe it acceptable to alienate and sell their body parts. This thesis argues that the dualistic (and to a lesser extent the materialistic) conceptions of the person have contributed significantly to the objectification and commodification of the body. A most disturbing example of this is the patenting of human genetic material. / In place of the dualistic metaphysic, an embodiment perspective is proposed that treats the person as a unique individual who is inseparably unified in mind, body, and soul. This view can help address the problem of patenting and commercialisation as it avoids the difficulties raised by the application of property language to the body. The body is not simply an object that can be bought or sold, but is an integral part of a person's identity. This does not mean that medical research must be prohibited, but simply that an individual's cells and any derivative cell lines should not be subject to patents. Above all, an embodiment perspective forces the medical and technological establishment, and society in general, to accept that people are unique unified individuals who cannot be objectified, commodified, or alienated from their bodies and selves.

Il lavoro affronta il tema dell’oggetto e dell’ambito di tutela del brevetto biotecnologico, con particolare riferimento al brevetto di sequenze di DNA. L’importanza crescente delle biotecnologie, in settori come quello agroalimentare, e il peso notevole degli investimenti che la ricerca in questo ambito richiede, impongono il ricorso ad un efficace modello di tutela che incentivi il progresso tecnologico, senza, tuttavia, ostacolare la ricerca derivata. A partire da questa premessa, il lavoro mette in luce, in primo luogo, le problematiche fondamentali poste dalla disciplina del brevetto per invenzione industriale. Successivamente, in una prospettiva comparata, lo studio si occupa dell’oggetto del brevetto biotecnologico e dei requisiti di brevettabilità, attraverso un esame della disciplina, della dottrina e della più recente giurisprudenza europea e statunitense. Con riferimento all’Europa, in particolare, l’analisi si concentra attorno alla disciplina posta dalla direttiva 98/44/CE sulla tutela delle invenzioni biotecnologiche. Il lavoro si articola, quindi, attorno al tema dell’estensione del brevetto biotecnologico, attraverso l’esame dei diversi paradigmi di tutela possibili e ponendo l’accento sulle strategie per un efficace contemperamento dei diversi interessi coinvolti. / This work relates to biotechnological inventions, specifically concerning patentability and scope of protection of DNA sequences. Biotechnology is of utmost importance in many sectors, not least in the agro food one. Moreover, this is a high capital intensive field of study, where downstream research is mainly based on upstream results. Consequently, it is extremely important to provide a system of protection aimed at spurring innovation without preventing subsequent research. This considered, the work highlights the general legal framework on patents. It then focuses on the object of biotech patents and patentability requirements, through a comparative study of the US and the European legal system and on the most recent case law. Specifically concerning Europe, an in depth analysis of the 98/44/CE directive is carried out. The research work then focuses on the main models of patent protection, with the aim of emphasizing strategies to collect the different and diverging interests arising over the issue. ​

The paper sheds some light on the issue of geographically mediated knowledge spillovers from university research activities to regional knowledge production in high tech industries in Austria. Knowledge spillovers occur because knowledge created by university is typically not contained within that institution, and thereby creates value for others. The conceptual framework for analysing geographic spillovers of university research on regional knowledge production is derived from Griliches (1979). It is assumed that knowledge production in the high tech sectors essentially depends on two major sources of knowledge: the university research that represents the potential pool of knowledge spillovers and R&D performed by the high tech sectors themselves. Knowledge is measured in terms of patents, university research and R&D in terms of expenditures. We refine the standard knowledge production function by modelling research spillovers as a spatially discounted external stock of knowledge. This enables us to capture regional and interregional spillovers. Using district-level data and employing spatial econometric tools evidence is found of university research spillovers that transcend the geographic scale of the political district in Austria. It is shown that geographic boundedness of the spillovers is linked to a decay effect. (authors' abstract) / Series: Discussion Papers of the Institute for Economic Geography and GIScience

This study analyses Intellectual Property Rights related to space activities and Space Law. The potential contradictions between these two laws are of specific interest. Besides the different approaches on which their legislation has been established, the increasing role of private companies as space actors calls for the adoption of a strong legal framework for Intellectual Property. / The issue of Intellectual Property Rights in outer space will be examined within the first Part, with a focus on Patent Law. The second Part explores the specific rules contained in the International Space Station Intergovernmental Agreement, on Intellectual Property and exchange of data and goods. Although there is some legal mechanism, no protection capable to meet the space industry's current and future needs.