Chief Economist Speaker Series

Academics are invited to the USPTO to present their latest research on patent, trademark, trade secret or copyright issues. Find their recent research at their scholar pages linked below.

2023

April 27 - "Innovation and Appropriability: Revisiting the Role of Intellectual Property," Tim Simcoe (Boston University)

February 9 - "The America Invents Act and Innovation by Small Entities," Satyaki Chakravarty (University of North Carolina Greensboro)

January 11 - "Measuring the Characteristics and Employment Dynamics of U.S. Inventors,” Nathan Goldschlag (U.S. Census Bureau)

2022

October 18 - "Should firms hold more patents? A randomized control trial on the commercial value of patent protection," Neil Thompson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

May 17 - "The Effect of Female Political Leadership on Innovation: Evidence from U.S. Cities," Neel Sukhatme (Georgetown University Law Center)

April 20 - "Citations Backward and Forward: Insights Into the Patent Examiner’s Role,” Brian Wright (University of California at Berkeley)

2021

November 9 - "Gender and Application Dynamics in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Applications," Gauri Subramani (Lehigh University)

September 28 - "Reliance on Science by Inventors: Hybrid Extraction of In-text Patent-to-Article Citations,Linguistic Metrics for Patent Disclosure: Evidence from University Versus Corporate Patents," Nancy Kong (University of Sydney)

July 8 - "Reliance on Science by Inventors: Hybrid Extraction of In-text Patent-to-Article Citations," Matt Marx (Cornell University)

May 20 - "Patenting inventions or inventing patents? Strategic use of continuations at the USPTO," Tim Simcoe (Boston University)

April 1 - "Antitrust and Innovation Competition," Daniel Spulber (Northwestern University)

Previous years

2020

September 23 - "Quantifying the Impact of AI on Productivity and Labor Demand: Evidence from U.S. Census Microdata," Lee Branstetter (Carnegie Mellon University) and Nikolas Zolas (U.S. Census Bureau)

February 18 - "How fast is this novel technology going to be a hit? Antecedents predicting follow-on inventions," Reinhilde Veugelers (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

January 28 - "Evaluating the PTAB as a Substitute for the Federal Courts," Saurabh Vishnubhakat (Texas A&M University School of Law)

2019

November 14 - "Catalysts for Gender Inclusion in Innovation: The Role of Universities and their Top Inventors," Mercedes Delgado (Copenhagen Business School)

October 24 - "Strategic Citation: A Reassessment," Jeffrey Kuhn (UNC Chapel Hill)

October 10 - "The Patent Troll: Benign Middleman or Stick-Up Artist?," Ufuk Akcigit (The University of Chicago)

September 18 - "Intellectual Property Rights and U.S. Trade," William Lincoln (Claremont McKenna College)

August 15 - "Reliance on Science in Patenting," Matt Marx (Boston University)

May 28 - "International trademarking and exports: A predictive analysis," Trevor Kollmann (Swinburne University of Technology)

May 13 - "Automatically Learning and Labeling Section Types for Structured Documents," Mark Finlayson (Florida International University)

May 9 - "The Innovation Gap in Pink and Black," Lisa D. Cook (Michigan State University)

April 11 - "Changes in the Demographics of American Inventors, 1870 – 1940," Michael Andrews (National Bureau of Economic Research)

March 27 - "TM-Link," Benjamin Mitra-Kahn (IP Australia)

2018

November 1 - "Using Google Trends and Trademark Data to Value Brands," Georg von Graevenitz (Queen Mary University of London)

September 27 - "Effects of Copyrights on Science," Petra Moser (New York University School of Business)

September 20 - "Helping the Little Guy: The Impact of Government Awards on Small Technology Firms," Aleksandar Giga (University of Southern California)

May 24 - "NSF Proposal Search and Clustering + Patents," Paul Morris (National Science Foundation)

April 24 - Digital "Mash-ups," Patents, and Copyright, Kevin Boudreau (Northeastern University)

March 29 - Measuring the Novelty of Patents, Jonathan Ashtor (Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP)

February 27 - Innovation Worth Buying: The Fair-Value of Innovation Benchmarks and Proxies, James Potepa (George Washington University School of Business) and Kyle Welch (George Washington University School of Business)

2017

November 7 - Patent Examiner Specialization, Cesare Righi (Boston University School of Management)

October 5 - The Patent System and Licensing and Follow-on Research of Academic Inventions, Zhen Lei (Pennsylvania State University)

September 22 - The Redeployability of Patent Assets: Evidence from Failed Startups, Rosemarie Ziedonis (Boston University)

August 31 - Patent Reexamination and The America Invents Act, Brendan Costello (Yale Law School)

June 27 - What happens to university patenting and start-ups when intellectual property rights are taken away from faculty inventors?, Andrew Toole (USPTO)

May 9 - The Role of Corporate Venture Capital Investments in Patent Sales of High-Tech Ventures, Francesco Di Lorenzo (Wolfgang Sofka, Copenhagen Business School)

March 30 - Gender of PCT Inventors, Julio Raffo (World Intellectual Property Organization)

March 23 - Screening for Patent Quality: Examination, Fees, and the Courts, Mark Schankerman (London School of Economics)

March 2 - Piracy, Profits and Creative Output: Empirics of Copyright Research, Rahul Telang (Carnegie Mellon University)

January 31 - What's a Brand Worth? Trademark Protection, Profits and Product Quality, Davidson Heath (The University of Utah) and Chris Mace (The University of Utah)

2016

November 29 - Interactive Recommender Systems for Patent Processing, John Walsh (Drexel University)

September 13 - Tagmarks, Alexandra Roberts (University of New Hampshire School of Law)

July 26 - Bioinformatics Patent Data and Non-patent Literature, Richard Jefferson (The Lens and Cambia)

May 19 - Digitization and the Quality, Quantity, and Welfare Benefits of New Music, Books, Movies, and Television in the Digital Era, Joel Waldfogel (University of Minnesota)

May 3 - The Patent Troll: Benign Middleman or Stick-up Artist, Ufuk Akcigit (University of Chicago)

April 28 - Patent Clutter, Janet Freilich (Harvard Law School)

March 21 - Technology Protectionism and the Patent System, Gaétan de Rassenfosse (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL)

March 15 - The Bright Side of Patents, Deepak Hegde (New York University)

February 22 - The Mechanics of Endogenous Innovation and Growth: Evidence from Historical U.S. Patents, William R. Kerr (Harvard Business School)

2015

November 19 - Patent Similarity: A vector space model, Kenneth Younge (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)) and Jeffrey Kuhn (UC Berkeley)

November 10 - Patent Trolls and the Patent Examination Process, Xavier Jaravel (Harvard Business School)

October 8 - The Lifecycle of Inventors: Uncovering the Sources of Innovation, Neviana Petkova (U.S. Department of Treasury)

August 25 - The Impact of Codified Prior Art Adoption: The Case of Herbal Patents, Prithwiraj Choudhury (Harvard Business School)

July 30 - Who Cares About Patent Term? Cross-Industry Differences in Term Sensitivity, Neel Sukhatme (Georgetown Law)

May 28 - Forecasting Science and Technology Emergence, Dewey Murdick (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity) and Jason Matheny (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity)

April 30 - Business Dynamics of Innovative firms: Measuring outcomes from patenting activity, Javier Miranda (U.S. Census Bureau) and Cheryl Grim (U.S. Census Bureau)

March 17 - Patent Trolls: Evidence from Targeted Firms, Scott Kominers (Harvard University), Umit Gurun (University of Texas) and Lauren Cohen (Harvard Business University)

February 20 - How do patents affect follow-on innovation? Evidence from the human genome" Heidi Williams (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Bhaven Sampat (Columbia University)

2014

December 11 - A Comparative Empirical Analysis of Patent Prosecution in the USPTO and EPO, Jay Kesan (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

December 10 – Creative Industries, Dimiter Gantchev ( World Intellectual Property Organization)

October 28 - Can Patent Family Size and Composition Signal Patent Value, Walter Park (American University)

September 25 - The Importance of Patent Publication, Deepak Hegde (New York University)

August 14 - Privacy, Big Data, and the Public Good: Frameworks for Engagement, Julia Lane (American Institute for Research)

May 22 - Patent Claims, Jonas Anderson (American University)

April 1 - Overbreadth and Functionality in Software Patents, Kevin Collins (Washington University Law)

March 12 - Information Technology, Patenting, Firm Performance, and the Potential of Natural Language Processing, Joseph Bailey (University of Maryland)

February 20 - Unpacking Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs), Jay Kesan (University of Illinois College of Law)

January 24 - Patent Licensing of Federally Funded Inventions, Josh Sarnoff (DePaul University)

2013

December 3 - Dynamics of Patent Precedent and Enforcement: An Introduction to the UGA Patent Litigation Datafile, John Turner (University of Georgia)

October 24 - O'Reilly v. Morse: What Hath Tawney Wrought?, Adam Mossoff (George Mason University)

October 3 - Copyright and Licenses, David Touve (University of Virginia)

January 29 - Prototype Patent Visualization Tool, Julia Lane and Rebecca Rosen (American Institutes for Research)

January 14 - Technology Entry in the Presence of Patent Thickets, Bronwyn Hall (University of California, Berkeley, Department of Economics)

2012

December 13 - Report: UC Berkeley China Patents Project, Brian Wright, Zhen Sun, and Siwei Cao (University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics)

November 1 - Teaching Biotech, Sean O'Connor (University of Washington School of Law)

October 2 - Patents and the University, Peter Lee (UC Davis School of Law)

September 6 - Notice Failure and Notice Externalities, Michael Meurer (Boston University School of Law)

July 10 - Extraterritoriality in U.S. Patent Law, Timothy Holbrook (Emory University School of Law)

June 19 - The Quality and Geography of U.S. Patents, Jonathan Rothwell (Brookings Institution), Deborah Strumsky (UNC Charlotte Department of Geography and Earth Sciences), José Lobo (Arizona State University), and Mark Muro (Brookings Institution)

May 15 - The Rise of Contingent Fee Representation in Patent Litigation, David Schwartz (IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law)

April 26 - The Provider-Monopoly Problem in Health Care, Barak Richman (Duke University)

February 8 - Judicial Experience and the Efficiency and Accuracy of Patent Adjudication: An Empirical Analysis of the Case for a Specialized Patent Trial Court, Jay Kesan (University of Illinois College of Law)

2011

August 16 - Screening and Fees: Some Thoughts on Designing the Right Mix, Mark Schankerman (London School of Economics)

April 22 - Intellectual Property Rights and Developing Countries: Theory and Evidence, Lee Branstetter (Carnegie Mellon University)