INVENTORSHIP AND AUTHORSHIP AS ATTRIBUTION RIGHTS: AN

ENQUIRY INTO THE ECONOMICS OF SCIENTIFIC CREDIT

Francesco Lissoni, Fabio Montobbio

Università degli studi di Brescia (Italy)Università dell’Insubria, Varese (Italy)

KITES – Università “L. Bocconi”, Milan (Italy)

APE-INV/TTFactor_IFOM-IEO/EPI workshop “Intellectual Property and Fundamental Research” at Bocconi University, Milan – June 9, 2011

Motivation

o Empirical analysis of the distribution of reputation among scientists working in teams

o Focus on “simultaneous disclosure” of scientific knowledge (of commercial value), by means of publications and patents

o Advance the notion of “attribution rights” (authorship, inventorship) as an interesting research subject…

…in S&T

…in all fields of creative activity which require teamwork, but place reward on personal reputation

The rise of teamwork in S&T

Mean size of teams – Source; Wutchy et al., 2007

The rise of teamwork in S&T: A consequence

o PROBLEMS OF ATTRIBUTION CONTRAST BETWEEN THE REALITY OF TEAMWORK AND THE INDIVIDUALISTIC BIAS OF “ATTRIBUTION RIGHTS”, AS DEFINED BY LAWS AND SOCIAL CONVENTIONS IN SCIENCE

What are Attribution Rights (ARs)? ARs are non-economic privileges “moral rights”:

1.Paternity (ATTRIBUTION in strict sense) = right of an author of a piece of creative work to be identified as such

2.INTEGRITY = right to oppose any change/use in the work that might distort/alter it, with consequences for the author’s reputation

All “creativity-intensive” sectors and national legislations have implicit or explicit legal treatment of ARs Explicit legal protection in continental Europe; weaker,

less formal protection in anglo-saxon countries, in association with © laws

Recognized by UNESCO’s treaty on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and WIPO (Berne convention)

Economic relevance of ARs

They help solving problems of info asymmetry…

• In all industries which buy and sell “creative” products & services

1.Music, Publishing… 2.Movies, Theatre…3.Scientific and technological research

• In all these sectors individuals’ reputation and career are based on their paternity of valuable pieces of creative work It conveys info to perspective employers or service customers

Authorship as attribution • The best-known and more widespread form of attribution is

AUTHORSHIP: novels, songs, newspaper articles… all are signed by “authors”

• But in many instance authorship is either split among several people or even replaced by other forms of attributionSPLITTING joint authorship of scientific papersREPLACEMENT

in movies, “authorship” is replaced by more generic “credits” for specific tasks: directing. producing, acting, lightning, … and even food catering or bus driving!

in music, composers and lyrics-writer may be distinct, and often overshadowed by performers (who retain distinctive ARs)

• INVENTORSHIP is also form of authorship

Negotiation of authorship

• Creative activities in many fields have become increasingly complex growth of teams’ size and of division of labour therein strain on “individualistic” setting of ARs

• In the media and music industry, “contributorship” has replaced authorship to a large extent “credits” to different professional figures are now the new social convention

• In S&T, on the contrary, papers and patents still provide only generic “authorship” and “inventorship” credit is that efficient?

Are teams forced to NEGOTIATE ARs in order to adapt them to the realities of division of S&T labour?

Does negotiation “kill” relevant information?

Inventorship• Inventorship is a legal concept: Conception + Reduction to practice as necessary joint contributions more restrictive criteria than those for authorship• Arbitrary elements:No check by examinersSpecific practices within R&D labs and univ. departmentsInventorship perceived as a reward (individual scientists

are rarely the owners of the patent)• No specific study yetLabour market for inventors has been under-studiedInfo on “real contribution” to invention is closely guarded

by firms how to compare it with info on patent documents?

STUDIES ON INVENTORSHIP ARE THEREFORE VERY FEW, NEW, AND LIMITED TO INVENTORSHIP AMONG SCIENTISTS

A special case of ARs: joint authorship & inventor-ship in academic science• Patents and publications as joint products of collective

effort (Murray & Stern, 2007; Gans et al., 2010) PATENT-PUBLICATION PAIRs (PPPs)

• Individual contributions vary by nature and intensity BUT only 3 fine-tuning mechanisms of ARs available:- grant one or both ARs- name ordering in authorship- repay omission of ARs with collaterals (e.g. job openings

for juniors)

• Room/need for negotiation: trade-offs between ARs 2 sets of criteria:- Legal: inventorship more restrictive than authorship- Personal: subjective value of ARs and bargaining power

Academic reputation (gift /guest authorship)Seniority (juniors value authorship more than

inventorship)Gender (women as juniors)

Key research tool: patent-publication pairs (PPPs)

• 1st step: 6810 potential PPPs: associations between a patent filed at time t and a publication published in [t-2, t+2], by the same acad. inventor

• 2nd step: selection of actual PPPs “bag-of-words” text-mining method using titles and abstracts

– Cosine similarity measure (S)

– S in the top 10 percentile: 681 PPPs (robustness checks: top 5% and top 1 %)

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Negotiation over authorship+inventorship

TESTSBASIC: Authorship granted more generously than

inventorship

Estimate probability of authors’ exclusion from patent, on the basis of:

1.Extent of contribution to research effort

2. Seniority

3. Academic prestige

4. Gender

5. Controls for academic discipline, nr of authors & other characteristics of individuals and patents

BASIC1. Evidence on authors’ exclusion

Estimation of the probability of exclusion

• We use the 680 pat-pub pairs, in which: nr of authors ≤ nr of inventors of related patents authors are not listed alphabetically

• 1842 obs = authori x publicationsi (excl. academic inventors)

• Dependent variable: EXCLUSION EVENTeither from ONE of the patents in the PPP or from ALL the patents in PPP One-to-one 44 cases

One-to-many 271 cases

Many-to-many 346 cases

Many-to-one 20 cases

FURTHER RESEARCH

Are current ARs (authorship, inventorship) responsible for inefficiencies in the labour markets for scientists and engineers? Some episodes may suggest it is the case, but we lack theory and data

Do current ARs (authorship, inventorship) emphasize the Matthew effect in science? Do they contribute to increasing career difficulties for young scientists?

Does negotiation over ARs occur also in other creative fields? What are the economic consequences and policy implications?