• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.279-302
• /
• 2013

This paper empirically examines the effect of government R&D support on the performance of the firm in Korea. In particular, we examine to what extent the government R&D support affected the firm's exploratative performance. Using a novel dataset combining patent information with national government R&D funding data and firm performance indicators from 2005-2008, we construct and run an empirical model where a firm's exploratative activity, measured by a firm patenting in a different field, is a function of the government R&D support a firm receives. The empirical results show that the government R&D support has a positive effect on the firm's exploratative activity. Especially, this effect is stronger for the small and medium size firms, while large firms are relatively relying on their own R&D funding for exploration. This result indicates that the government needs to focus more on R&D funding for small and medium size firms, if it wants more exploratative outcomes to enhance potential resources for economic development.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
• /
• v.16 no.2
• /
• pp.444-475
• /
• 2013

This study explores the trajectories of institutionalization for technology transfer both in the U.S. and Korea, particularly focusing on two universities: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and the University of California (UC). By comparing the diverging paths of the two universities in setting up institutions, this paper examines the limits of and lessons for technology transfer policies both to Korean government and universities in Korea. The University of California was involved in designing rules and codes, on one hand, to stimulate its members' engagements with technology transfer activity and, on the other hand, to keep its academic integrity since, no later than, the 1960s. The efforts and consequences range from its rules of patenting system to its codes of conducts. Through making rules formal and resolving conflicts on technology transfer activity, the U.S., and the University of California have decreased uncertainties for its members' engagements with industries. By contrast, KAIST has not built up such range of rules or codes due to its shorter experience and its constraining legal contexts. Korea introduced the legal format of the US Bayh-Dole Act in 2002, and its central government has led the initiatives for technology transfer, not allowing much latitude for its universities. This study implies a set of policy recommendations to the Korean government and KAIST: to build entrepreneurial universities, the government should give greater latitude to universities, so universities should be more rigorously engaged in developing their own rules and routines; the government, rather, should focus on providing bridging R&D funds like the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), so researchers could draw on resources to move their basic research into next phases; KAIST would be better to promote its members to engage with industries, and introduce conduct codes that allow its academics to engage in industrial activity, rather than building up its commercialization facilities.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.299-322
• /
• 2012

Biotechnology is considered a new propeller to national economic growth. Although BT-based converging technology is one of keywords in nowadays, few studies analyze the characteristics of Korean BT convergence market. This study has conducted the analysis of BT-based converging technology market by using patent database in KIPO (Korean Intellectual Property Office) from 2000 to 2010. We, especially, have classified BT convergence into homogeneous and heterogeneous ones, and compare the nature of BT convergence market with that of non-convergence one. To achieve the object of this study, the following methods are used: concentration across IPC technological classes; concentration of patenting activity across firms; PFS (Patent Family Size) index. Furthermore, according to FOS technology-industry table, we have intended to find new converging industry of BT heterogeneous converging technologies. As very few studies have focused on Korean converging technology market so far, this analysis is considered to be meaningful. It is found that the market of BT converging technology is rather robust than that of BT non-converging one, which refers that BT convergence shows the tendency of concentration towards few technologies by few conglomerate firms in Korea. Meanwhile, we have derived a BINET keyword map to research the convergence of sub-technologies in detail and the related industries. We expect the implications of this study to be utilized in establishing the BT-based converging technology policy.

• Management & Information Systems Review
• /
• v.36 no.3
• /
• pp.239-254
• /
• 2017

This study examines the relationship between R&D spending and patent rights, which are suggested by firms as a way to increase their firm value. Specifically, we examine the relationship between research and development costs and patent rights, and see if there are any differences in the influence of two variables on firm value. The period of this study is from 2005 to 2016, and the sample of companies used in the research including the patenting companies is composed of 333 companies in total. The results of the study are as follows. First, the cost of R&D expenditure and capitalized R&D expenditure showed a significant positive correlation with patents. Second, R&D spending did not show a significant relationship with firm value, but patent rights showed a significant positive correlation with firm value. However, firms that spend a large amount of R&D expenditure (RDD), such as research and development expenses, showed a significant positive (+) value and a patent dummy (PATD). Third, in the analysis of the difference between the dummy of research and development and the patent dummy, the enterprise value of a company that invested a lot of patents and research and development expenses was high. The contribution of this study is to examine the relevance of corporate value to R&D investment for patents. On the other hand, there are various variables that can be used as a sample of patents.

• Journal of Information Technology and Architecture
• /
• v.9 no.3
• /
• pp.287-301
• /
• 2012

Against Nonaka's seminal work in 1999, this study aims to investigate various influencing factors on knowledge-transfer channels of Korean academics. To do this, we surveyed 20,000 Korean academics in science and engineering with regard to factors involved in their formal and informal collaborative activities with firms. In particular, we focus on the individual characteristics of the academics when the channels are changed from informal channels (e.g. consulting) to formal channels (e.g. licensing), as the codification of knowledge is important when it is spilled over. According to the results, male academics with a longer career and in the field of applied disciplines in a big laboratories are likely to join the transformation of the channels. Interestingly, application capacity as measured by the number of patent application is significantly and positively related to the participation of formal channels. In contrast, scientific capacity as measured by the number of papers is significantly and negatively, or in some case weakly, related to the participation. Finally, based on the findings, some policy implications are put forwarded.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.14 no.3
• /
• pp.169-183
• /
• 2019

Should a startup file for a patent subject to imitation in its quest to attract venture capital(VC) investors? Considering the US pharmaceutical biotechnology industry context, this paper attempts to answer this question by investigating the relations between the number of applied patents of startups, patent imitability, and the total amount of money the startups received as their first VC funding round. Data of 157 US-based pharmaceutical biotechnology startups founded in between 1995 and 2005 are analyzed. Empirical results from this study show that the number of applied patents is positively related to the total amount of money received at the time of the first funding round, and patent imitability is negatively related to the total amount of money received as first VC funding round. Nonetheless, the interaction term between the number of applied patents of startups and patent imitability came out as positive, raising interesting questions and implications for innovation-oriented startup entrepreneurs. The current study's empirical findings suggest that, in the pharmaceutical biotechnology sector, VC investors pay attention to the quantity and quality of the patents possessed by startups when they decide the level of funding. In particular, imitability of applied patents may not be a one-sided concept related to negative features such as the weak protectability of an invention. Rather, patent imitability may be a multi-facet element which also contains positive attractiveness of the startup's invention. Furthermore, it seems that the positive side of imitability can be augmented by the number of applied patents.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
• /
• v.26 no.4
• /
• pp.435-456
• /
• 2020

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of democratic patenting behavior of father in the relations of work-family conflict, marital satisfaction and depression of working mother who has child in 1st grade in elementary school. This study used data from 2015 Panel Study on Korean Children. The subjects are 610 working mothers and their spouses who completed the survey included the scales of work-family conflicts, democratic parenting behavior, marital satisfaction, and depression. The main results are followed. First, marital satisfaction of mother mediated the relationship between work-family conflict and depression. Second, the interaction of work-family conflict of mother and democratic parenting behavior of father had an effect on marital satisfaction of mother. Third, the moderated mediation effect of democratic parenting behavior of father on the association between work-life conflict, marital satisfaction and depression of mother. These findings suggested democratic parenting behavior of father as protective factor concerning in work-family conflict of working mother. These findings suggest that enhancing marital satisfaction and quality of parenting of father are important to protect depression of working mother who experienced the work-family conflict.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
• /
• v.32 no.4
• /
• pp.115-151
• /
• 2010

Recently Korean universities show very rapid increases in both patents and R&D (research and development) expenditures. During the period from 1970 to 2008, university R&D spending has on the average increased 15.3% annually. Along with steady increases in R&D spending, university's research outputs have also continuously increased. In 1990 Korea as a total published 1,613 SCI-level scientific papers and Korean universities applied 27 patents to Korea patent office. In 2008, Korea published more that 35,000 SCI papers and Korean universities applied about 7,300 patents. The growth of scientific articles had begun from the early 1990s whereas the growth of patent has ignited entering the 2000s. The paper tried to investigate university research through the window of patent. Patents lie between invention and innovation and represent the potential value of invention which will be realized at the marketplace. Since Korean patents do not contain citation information, the paper used US patents-NBER patent database-as the main data. The key empirical question is whether Korean university patents granted from USPTO are characteristically different from other Korean patents granted from USPTO. Previous studies on US and Europe show that corporate patents are more stylized in appropriablity of invention, whereas university patents basicness. In case of Korea, the paper confirmed the appropriability characteristic of corporate patents; but the Korean unversity patents are not distinguishable in terms of basicness. The paper estimated the citation frequency function-an empirical model which was firstly developed by Caballero and Jaffe (1993) and later articulated by Jaffe and Trajtenberg (1996, 2002). The model is specified mainly composed of two interacting parts-diffusion effect and obsolescence effect of new ideas or innovations. Estimation results show that differences in forward citations between university and corporate patents are not statistically significant, after controlling self-citation. Since forward citations represent the quality of patents, this estimation result implies that there are no statistically significant quality differences between university and corporate patents. Prior research results, based on the same model of citation frequency function, about US and some European cases show that, in terms of forward citations, university patents are generally superior to corporate patents -for the case of US- or, the former not inferior to the latter-for the case of most of Europe. It is argued that some important and significant policy changes caused the rapid rise of university patents in Korea. Policy changes include the revision of technology transfer act allowing the ownership of publicly-funded research results to researchers and the changes in faculty/professor evaluation which gives more credit to the number of patents. These policy changes have triggered the rapid growth of the number of university patents. The results of the empirical analysis in this paper indicated that Korea now needs to make further efforts to enhance the quality of university patents, not just to produce more numbers of patents.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.7 no.6
• /
• pp.1319-1336
• /
• 2006

The successive round of talks oil Korea-USA Free Trade Agreement (FTA) has continued, and it also has the Intellectual property(IPR) unit. Until now, tile one of most disputing concerns in IPR unit through talks is the limitation of compulsory license of claimed invention. The US is urging to establish a safeguard for IPR, as similar measure of the US, to protecting the profit of the US enterprises through these on-going talks, it is more likely expected to take the offensive about infringement of the patent seriously. Based on the current circumstances, the provision strategy study is needed to obtain Korea inventors the first inventor defense under the US patent law system as well as understand the current Korea's patent law and its revision against that in the US. In patent Law, both nations with first to file system and first to invent system permit a prior user of an invention to continue to use the invention notwithstanding its subsequent patenting by another under being subject to certain qualifications and limitations, even though a patent by a later inventor is granted. Normally, the first inventor defense has been used to compensate the drawbacks of the first to file system. The US patent Law, however, adopting the first to invent system admits the first inventor defense. Therefore, pursuing counteract provision under consideration with Korean patent Law system and research environment along with investigating the reason why the US adopted its patent law system, the scope of right, and the new reform of Act. 2005 of the institute, which promotes the first Korean inventor to possess the defense right of the US, provides certain preparations for Korean companies against the expected offensive from the US ones under the US patent Law system.