O34 - Intellectual Property and Intellectual CapitalReturn

This study complements our long-term systemic research so as to promote technological innovation in the EU countries. The main research goal of this study is to examine technological innovation in the developing EU countries and to identify positive and negative technology innovation-related processes. In terms of the methodology of this research, as the main method was chosen Patent analysis of the WIPO database (1980-2014), which we perform in a long term. The patent data were analyzed, verified and summarized for the purposes of this study and subsequently completed by Bibliometric analysis of the technological innovation activities in these countries - for identifying relevant trends. In the analytical part of our study was in particular examined the overall development of technology patents in the developing EU countries. According to these indicators, among the most successful technology developing countries in the EU mainly belong Poland, Hungary, Romania, and the more successful are also Greece and Bulgaria. Such a long-term study in our conditions has not been realized yet.

Certain fundamentals of the nanotechnology (NT) discipline can be already found in 1870, when two professors Elihu Thomson and Edwin Houston experimented and later patented inventions on the existing arc lamps and dynamo design. The emergence of NT as a new scientific discipline can be found a hundred years later and it is also connected with the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope and the discovery of fullerenes. Among the first companies that patented NT were: General Electric, Unisys, Honeywell, DuPont, Bell Labs, and IBM. Among the first patenting areas of NT were: nano-materials, nano-manufacturing and nano-interactions. This scientific study has two particular goals. Methodological part (Chapter 1 and 2) provides a clear insight into selected topical issues of patenting, searching and categorization of NT. This part is often overlooked/simplified in many scientific papers on NT, which brings a lot of uncertainty for this discipline. The second part is the systemic analysis (Chapter 3) that is to provide a clear insight into the patented NT in the EU, based on the comprehensive statistics of the European database of EPO patents (1940-2015). But, the main scientific goal of this study is to make some conclusions for the promotion of innovation and patenting NT in the EU.

Presented paper is focused on the relationship of intellectual property rights and competitiveness of countries. First part describes various approaches to the country competitiveness definition and deals with its relation to economic growth. Productivity, as one of main factors of economic growth and competitiveness, is fairly determined by technological level in particular economy. Technological innovations then influence competitiveness. Nowadays economic policymakers try to support innovations through various instruments. Main aim of these instruments is to create innovation-friendly environment. Integral part of this environment is a consistent definition of intellectual property rights. Industrial property rights are an integral part of the protection of intellectual property rights. The second part of this paper introduces the most frequent types of industrial property rights and point outs its pros and cons. It also points out the specific features of intangibles and their relation to technological level. Generally can be industrial property rights considered as a barrier that restricts the process of diffusion of innovation. Adjustment of industrial property rights determines the effectiveness of those barriers. The effect of this barrier is ambivalent. Existence of barrier may motivate individuals to introduce new innovations on the one hand, but it can also negatively influence consumer surplus on the other hand. The third part of this paper clarifies above mentioned and others effects of barriers to individual and social benefits in partial equilibrium model in perfect competition and imperfect competition market structures. Effects of industrial property rights are different in different market structures. Further research may be directed to empirical evidence of industrial property rights.