Story: BSA figures do not add up

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As the author of the CII study with which ZDNET takes issue, I find it
regrettable that the publication failed to contact me before writing the
story. Without repeating the allegations, let me respond to some specific
points made in your article:

* SME patent holders. Page 5 of the study makes it explicitly
clear that while we originally identified 2,560 patent assignees, the true
list, if given time to eliminate redundancies and all non-SMEs, probably
totals in the range of 2,000 to 2,200 unique assignees. While the ZDNET article alleges to have found 13 errors in the assignee list, even should we multiply that by a factor of 30, the report would still stand correct as originally printed. The ZDNET article in fact calls for a statistical correction which has already been done in the original report, far beyond the ZDNET reporter’s expectations.

* Definitions of CII. Page 3 of the study demonstrates that we purposely chose to use a conservative definition of CII patents in the interest of creating an unbiased, rule-based measure which is empirically reproducible. We carefully
examined and applied the definitions used by academic economists before
us, in order to be objective and yet consistent with the concept of CII.
In so doing, we did not consider many patents which commercial firms might
believe to be CII. For example, we consider only 17,086 patents granted
between 1998 and 2005. In contrast, a patent firm which maintains
the Patent Cooperation Treaty database reports a full eighty percent more
(30,754) to be CII over the same period, simply by using a larger and more
inclusive definition of CII. Should we have adopted that wider
definition, we would undoubtedly have found a significantly larger number
of SMEs involved in CII patent activity.

So, far from exaggerating the number of SME CII patent holders, as
alleged, the study methodology was specifically designed to err on the side of caution and the final report reflects this. In short, the original study is accurate, and as far as I am concerned, remains unassailed in spirit or in specific content.

Daniel K.N. Johnson
Mrachek Fellow and Assistant Professor
Department of Economics and Business
Colorado College
14 East Cache La Poudre Street
Colorado Springs, CO 80903
website http://faculty1.coloradocollege.edu/~djohnson
research papers at http://papers.ssrn.com/author=57030

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