Direct and Spillover Effects of ATP-Funded Photonics Technologies

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elated to) the subsequent attraction of investment capital, which in turn accelerates thecommercial development and economic return to the technology. Indeed, the rate of citationsmight be a useful and readily obtainable a priori metric for evaluating applications for futureATP grants, as not only an indication of the spillover potential from the scientific importanceof the work, but also as a proxy for the potential for attracting required capital.Moving on to evidence about the diffusion of information from Uniax patents, we find asomewhat different picture than when looking at Displaytech. We identified 18 patents issuedthrough 2001 assigned to Uniax, which attracted 110 citations from 38 differentorganizations or groups. The top-citing organizations appear in Table 11. To track thepotential value creation in the United States from the diffusion of the Uniax technologies, wecontacted and interviewed the principals at the top four U.S.-based groups: Thermo-Chem,IBM, Monsanto, and Eveready. The other top five citing group was the Finnish firm Neste(now Panipol), the early Uniax investor and licensee.Figure 22 shows the citing patents categorized by the main industry of the research groupinvolved and the home country of that group or organization. Compared with theDisplaytech patent citations (see Figures 11 and 12), the citations to Uniax are slightly moreconcentrated in the United States (77 percent versus 65 percent), but significantly morediverse in terms of applications outside of displays and imaging (69 percent versus 38percent). Both the greater U.S. focus and industry breadth would indicate higher spillovervalue potential for the United States from Uniax than from Displaytech. This industrydiversity is driven by chemical and materials companies such as Monsanto, Dow Chemical,and early Uniax investor Neste/Panipol, all of whom are interested as potential suppliersacross a broad range of applications of the attractive characteristics of ICPs. Another topcitingindustry, batteries, at first blush may seem a surprise, but it turns out that the chargestorage capacity of conductive polymers might eventually make cost-effective, moreenvironmentally friendly replacements for battery materials. More immediately, Eveready wasworking on using conductive plastics and flexible printed plastic electronic circuits in batterycharge-remaining indicator labels. The other significant citing industry is in electroniccomponents, where conductive plastic coatings have advantages for thermal sensing switches,for anticorrosion applications, and for antistatic shielding and discharge. Clearly, the rangeof possible applications of Uniax’s technology is broader than Displaytech’s.Social collaborative ties appear similarly important as a diffusion mechanism among theUniax patents as in the Displaytech case. This appears in Figure 23, which charts thecollaborative links as well as the fraction of citations by each of the top groups and theirgeographic distribution. Compared to Displaytech (see Figure 12), a lower fraction of citingorganizations has known collaborative ties to Uniax (19 percent compared to 28 percent).Among those collaborative ties, Uniax’s are more international than Displaytech’s.Nevertheless, the overall U.S. concentration of patent citations is higher (77 percentcompared to 65 percent), and the Japanese fraction is far lower (6 percent compared to 21percent). In part, this reflects the competitive strengths of U.S. firms in plastics-relatedmaterials and chemicals compared with Japanese strengths in LCDs. We address thiscompetitive strength again below when discussing the publication citations.60 DIRECT AND SPILLOVER EFFECTS OF ATP-FUNDED PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGIES
Table 11. Organizations and Groups Most Frequently Citing Uniax PatentsCiting Organization or Group Location CitationsTherm-O-Disc U.S.-Ohio 16IBM * U.S.-Metro NYC & Silicon Valley 14Neste (now Panipol) + Finland 9Monsanto U.S.-St. Louis 8Eveready Battery U.S.-Ohio 6Eastman Kodak * U.S.-Rochester NY 4Dow Chemical U.S.-Michigan 4Heeger et al. + U.S.-Southern CA 4Cambridge Display Technology + * U.K. 3Kemet Electronics U.S.-South Carolina 3Lynntech U.S.-Texas 3P. Kinlen et al. (had been at Monsanto) U.S.-St. Louis 3Philips + * Netherlands 3Notes: + known cooperative links to Uniax; * competing in display marketsThe top single citing organization, Therm-O-Disc, Inc., of Mansfield, Ohio, a subsidiary ofEmerson Electric Co., is a major supplier of temperature sensors, temperature controls, andtemperature-sensitive electrical switches. A principal application of billions of theirtemperature switches is in protective cutoff switches that protect against appliance motorsand circuits overheating. Their main products use strips made from two different metals withdifferent thermal expansion rates bonded together. They mechanically switch on and off inresponse to temperature changes. For solid-state electrical applications (rather thanmechanical) their research group developed techniques for using conductive polymermaterials as resistors that increase their resistance with temperature (called positivetemperature coefficient—PTC) and can withstand high temperature and high voltageenvironments. Therm-O-Disc sells these polymer-based PTC circuit protectors in largequantities for high temperature electronic circuits in automobile motors.Specifically, Thermo-O-Disc patents related to high temperature and high voltage PTCs citevarious Uniax patents related to processing technologies for ICPs. Liren Zhao, whose nameappears on all the Uniax-citing patents, led the research group. Zhao has since left the firm,and, despite repeated attempts, we unfortunately were unable to find him for first handverification. But our conversations with current Thermo-O-Disc technical personnel whoworked with him indicate that Thermo-O-Disc processing technologies have not changedsignificantly over the past five years and that most of their effort has concentrated onchemical formulation improvements. They were unaware of any relationship to the Uniaxpatents. There may have been learning value here, but not apparently embodied in corporatelearning or large enough to attract the notice of technical colleagues. If the spillover valuewere large and economically of high value, we would expect some echo would remain afterthe original researcher left.Comparison of Displaytech and Uniax 61
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NIST GCR 06-893Direct and Spillover
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AbstractTo evaluate the impact of t
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AcknowledgmentsThis research would
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This report presents the findings f
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6. This case study suggests that ke
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3. Comparison of Displaytech and Un
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1. Introduction and BackgroundThe A
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the Department of Defense (DOD), Na
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Hence, we consider two additional s
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area because many photonics technol
Page 25 and 26: FIGURE 2Worldwide Photonics Compone
Page 27 and 28: TABLE 3.Matched Case Study Firms by
Page 29 and 30: 2. DisplaytechINTRODUCTIONIn June 1
Page 31 and 32: significant interest worldwide. The
Page 33 and 34: FIGURE 3Cross-Section of a Ferroele
Page 35 and 36: TABLE 4.Crowded Display Competition
Page 37 and 38: FIGURE 4.Competing Electronic Displ
Page 39 and 40: wafer. For FLC-on-silicon microdisp
Page 41 and 42: FIGURE 5.Within-Market Increase in
Page 43 and 44: FIGURE 6.Estimated ATP Employment E
Page 45 and 46: subtracted the opportunity value of
Page 47 and 48: FIGURE 8.Historic Display Price-Qua
Page 49 and 50: TABLE 6.Estimated Consumer Surplus
Page 51 and 52: TABLE 7.Organizations and Groups Mo
Page 53 and 54: FIGURE 12.Patent Citations to Displ
Page 55 and 56: ColorLink’s pi-cell color switche
Page 57 and 58: FIGURE 14.Geographic Distribution o
Page 59 and 60: competitors, were added by patent e
Page 61 and 62: FIGURE 16.Citations to Displaytech
Page 63 and 64: TABLE 9.Top Organizations and Indiv
Page 65 and 66: FIGURE 19.Corporate Citations to Di
Page 67 and 68: TABLE 10.Corporations Citing Post-1
Page 69 and 70: 3. Comparison ofDisplaytech and Uni
Page 71 and 72: acklights of LCDs; and they are bri
Page 73 and 74: which was to give DuPont access to
Page 75: FIGURE 20.Timing of Displaytech and
Page 79 and 80: FIGURE 23.Patent Citations to Uniax
Page 81 and 82: In summary, together with Uniax ear
Page 83 and 84: TABLE 12.OLS Regression Results on
Page 85 and 86: FIGURE 26.Corporate Citations to Un
Page 87 and 88: TABLE 13.ContinuedTop 25 Individual
Page 89 and 90: FIGURE 28.Corporate Citations to Un
Page 91 and 92: 4. Findings and ObservationsFINDING
Page 93 and 94: microdisplays. We cannot fully dise
Page 95 and 96: TABLE 15.Publication and Citation R
Page 97 and 98: social ties, distance in the sense
Page 99 and 100: FIGURE 30.Flowchart of ATP Technolo
Page 101: government policies, which establis
Page 104 and 105: • ATP goals inherently involve se
Page 106 and 107: iv. Suppliers. Three or four on who
Page 108 and 109: Business Journal of Phoenix, The (2
Page 110 and 111: Paul, J. (2000), A Brief History of
Page 113: ABOUT THE AUTHORSTodd A. Watkins is
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Direct and Spillover Effects of ATP-Funded Photonics Technologies

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