Teaching Online

This is a brief guide to using a MacBook Pro, an iPad mini, an Apple pencil, Quicktime [free with MacBook], QM Plus (Moodle), Miro, WordPress and DailyMotion for online teaching. To simplify I will link to video created by others whereever possible. Aims My aim is to get three things done: Produce 60 videos (10…

Protected: The Firm

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

There is no Glory in Prevention

A slightly longer version of this post was published on the CORE Economics blog on the 30.6.2020. Successful prevention undermines the willingness to support tough measures and attracts little praise, this is the paradox of prevention. Former US presidents are no strangers to this paradox as outlined by Gibbs and Duffy in The President's Club. It…

Popular Brand Names and Clutter

On March 15th the IP Conversazione took place in Oxford as part of the 17th Annual Oxford International Intellectual Property Law Moot. The moot pitted students of IP law from around the world against each other to argue a trade mark case involving two identical trade marks used for different but reasonably similar goods. Roger…

Brexit Britain – Will the Industrial Strategy Deliver?

At the heart of the government’s industrial strategy is a commitment to increase overall UK investment in R&D to 2.4% of GDP in 2027. Currently investment stands at 1.67% of GDP. So this has got to be a good thing? Actually this target is not very ambitious when measured against comparable countries and this lack…

Quetzalcoatl: God of IP and Big Data?

  Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, is the god of wind and learning, patron of learning and knowledge and related to the gods of arts and crafts. He was first revered in Teotihuacan, just outside modern Mexico City. In modern societies incentives for knowledge creation are frequently dependent on protection and enforcement of IP rights (Patents,…

The Economic Effects of Copyright – Using CREATe & CORE Resources to Inform Regulators and Lawyers

The First Asia-Pacific Workshop on Empirical Methods in Innovation, IP and Competition was held at National Law University in Delhi in early March 2017. The workshop brought together researchers and regulators from India and South East Asia. Sessions focussed on the economics of IP law, the link between competition and IP law, regulation of competition…

Opportunities for Empirical Research on Copyright

In contrast to patents and trade marks , text and other materials protected by copyright do not necessarily end up being registered. That, it would seem, will curtail the possibilities for research on the effects of copyright protection or on any other research questions you might have regarding copyright. Nonetheless, there has been quite a bit…

Patent thickets and first-time patenting: New evidence

Patent filings have proliferated globally in recent years. While some may see this as a direct consequence of increased innovation, this column uses evidence from the UK to show that patent thickets – patents belonging to many companies protecting overlapping technology – reduce innovation. Patent thickets decrease entry (i.e. first time patenting in an area) by 20%, which is substantial bearing in mind that the average probability of entry into a technology area is only about 1.5%.

Predicting Sales with Google Trends

In 2009 the German government spent around 5 billion € to incentivize the replacement of older cars and to keep the car industry afloat after the financial crisis of 2008. We ( Graevenitz/Helmers/Millot/Turnbull ) exploit this subsidy "shock" to analyse how data on searches from Google Trends can be used to predict sales of cars in the United Kingdom and in Germany. The paper demonstrates how data on internet search can be used to predict product sales levels. As internet search also reveals variations in interest in many other things the methods used in the paper should have a wide range of application.