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This volume assembles papers commissioned by the National Research Council's Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) to inform judgments about the significant institutional and policy changes in the patent system made over the past two decades. The chapters fall into three areas. The first four chapters consider the determinants and effects of changes in patent \"quality.\" Quality refers to whether patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) meet the statutory standards of patentability, including novelty, nonobviousness, and utility. The fifth and sixth chapters consider the growth in patent litigation, which may itself be a function of changes in the quality of contested patents. The final three chapters explore controversies associated with the extension of patents into new domains of technology, including biomedicine, software, and business methods.

This study looks at the role of internal linkages in highly competitive clusters. We argue that, in addition to serving as a mechanism for sourcing knowledge, strong internal linkages help firms increase internalization and create higher levels of technological interdependence across firm locations. Firms with strong networks of internal linkages are able to maintain tighter control over local innovation and reduce the risk that knowledge outflows will advantage competitors in clusters. Our empirical analysis of the global semiconductor industry shows that industry leaders intensify internal linkages across locations when they collocate with direct market competitors, but not when they collocate with innovators in the same technological field. We also find that internal linkages are associated with more knowledge flow within firms and less knowledge expropriation by collocated competitors. Our results suggest that future research in cluster innovation should consider the critical role of multilocation firms, their internal organization across clusters, and their responses to technological and market competition in clusters. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.

About half a billion years ago, life on earth experienced a short period of very rapid diversification called the “Cambrian Explosion.” Many theories have been proposed for the cause of the Cambrian Explosion, one of the most provocative being the evolution of vision, allowing animals to dramatically increase their ability to hunt and find mates. Today, technological developments on several fronts are fomenting a similar explosion in the diversification and applicability of robotics. Many of the base hardware technologies on which robots depend—particularly computing, data storage, and communications—have been improving at exponential growth rates. Two newly blossoming technologies—“Cloud Robotics” and “Deep Learning”—could leverage these base technologies in a virtuous cycle of explosive growth. I examine some key technologies contributing to the present excitement in the robotics field. As with other technological developments, there has been a significant uptick in concerns about the societal implication of robotics and artificial intelligence. Thus, I offer some thoughts about how robotics may affect the economy and some ways to address potential difficulties.

Do multinationals go abroad to acquire technological knowledge? Do they also contribute knowledge locally? We investigate the learning and contribution patterns of multinational firms in the U.S. semiconductor industry through the analysis of citations to their patents and through field interviews. We find that the knowledge used in innovation by foreign subsidiaries in U.S. regions is predominantly local (at the regional and country level). In fact, foreign firms use regional knowledge significantly more than similar domestic firms. In the case of European and Korean firms, foreign investment is directed towards offsetting home country technological weaknesses. The study finds that foreign firms also contribute to local technological progress-a significant proportion of the citations to their patents are local. Local learning without contributing may not be possible.

Starting in the mid 1990s, the United States economy experienced an unprecedented upsurge in economic productivity. Rapid technological change in communications, computing, and information management continue to promise further gains in productivity, a phenomenon often referred to as the New Economy. To better understand this phenomenon, the National Academies Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) initiated a project to better measure the contributions of different elements of the new economy (semiconductors, computers, software, and telecommunications) and to develop policies to meet the needs of these growth-enhancing industries. Accompanied by four workshop reports, this summary volume describes the steps required to better measure and sustain the benefits of this new economy in the sectors examined.

This report summarizes a workshop--Strengthening Science-Based Decision-Making: Implementing the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants held June 7-10, 2004, in Beijing, China.

Starting in the mid 1990s, the United States economy experienced an unprecedented upsurge in economic productivity. Rapid technological change in communications, computing, and information management continue to promise further gains in productivity, a phenomenon often referred to as the New Economy. To better understand this phenomenon, the National Academies Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) has convened a series of workshops and commissioned papers on Measuring and Sustaining the New Economy. This major workshop, entitled Deconstructing the Computer, brought together leading industrialists and academic researchers to explore the contribution of the different components of computers to improved price-performance and quality of information systems. The objective was to help understand the sources of the remarkable growth of American productivity in the 1990s, the relative contributions of computers and their underlying components, and the evolution and future contributions of the technologies supporting this positive economic performance.

Hosted by Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, this symposium brought together leading technologists and economists to review technical challenges facing the semiconductor industry, the industry's business cycle, the interconnections between the two, and the implications of growth in semiconductors for the economy as a whole. This volume includes a summary of the symposium proceedings and three major research papers. Topics reviewed encompass the industry technology roadmap, challenges to be overcome to maintain the trajectory of Moore's Law, the drivers of the continued growth in productivity in the U.S. economy, and economic models for gaining a better understanding of this leading U.S. industry.

The US government must make the Department of Defense a key customer for energy technologies and make greenhouse-gas reductions a public good, say John Alic, Daniel Sarewitz, Charles Weiss and William Bonvillian.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine a development model of the Korean IT industry based on the concept of open and cluster innovation and reveal the synergistic effects between the textile and electronic industries.Design methodology approach - The analytical data on the Gumi Cluster are panel data mostly from the 1970s-2000s. The specific case studies are based on the field research and in-depth executive interviews for four firms.Findings - Through analysis of the innovation structure of the Gumi Cluster, the paper found that the Korean electronics industry has successfully caught up with first movers like the Japanese and US electronics industries. In this catch-up process, industrial clusters of the Korean electronic industry took on an open cluster and sought open and cluster innovation through collaborating with foreign firms and the other industries like the textile industry for making a rapid catch-up.Research limitations implications - The contribution of this study is to highlight the essential characteristics of cluster innovation and the practical growth patterns in the context of Korea which has achieved rapid technological catch-up. Future studies may involve the innovation patterns of other industries.Originality value - Prior cluster research does not necessarily integrate the two streams of research: development of national industries; open innovation processes within the clusters. This paper represents a unique approach to integrate two streams through analyzing the electronic industry.