Pledging Patent Rights for Fighting Against the COVID-19: From the Ethical and Efficiency Perspective

The AI ethics of digital COVID-19 diagnosis and their legal, medical, technological, and operational managerial implications

The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to a broad range of research from fields alongside and beyond the core concerns of infectiology, epidemiology, and immunology. One significant subset of this work centers on machine learning-based approaches to supporting medical decision-making around COVID-19 diagnosis. To date, various challenges, including IT issues, have meant that, notwithstanding this strand of research on digital diagnosis of COVID-19, the actual use of these methods in medical facilities remains incipient at best, despite their potential to relieve pressure on scarce medical resources, prevent instances of infection, and help manage the difficulties and unpredictabilities surrounding the emergence of new mutations. The reasons behind this research-application gap are manifold and may imply an interdisciplinary dimension. We argue that the discipline of AI ethics can provide a framework for interdisciplinary discussion and create a roadmap for the application of digital COVID-19 diagnosis, taking into account all disciplinary stakeholders involved. This article proposes such an ethical framework for the practical use of digital COVID-19 diagnosis, considering legal, medical, operational managerial, and technological aspects of the issue in accordance with our diverse research backgrounds and noting the potential of the approach we set out here to guide future research.

How does social network in patent provide changes in the Chinese manufacturing firm market value?

Patent thickets create external resource constraints that reduce the market value of enterprises. In the process of technological innovation, it is no longer possible to obtain competitive advantage by relying on individual resource endowment alone. Patent cooperation is considered an important institutional element in social network relations, through which enterprises can integrate external innovation resources to counteract their shortcomings and obtain competitive advantages. In this study, 419 electronic equipment manufacturing enterprises in China between 2009 and 2019 are used as the research objects, and panel data include the financial data of enterprises, the number of patent citations, and the number of patents jointly applied for by enterprises. Based on the patent fragmentation index, social network analysis is used to construct a patent cooperation network. Using UCINET and Gephi tools, the structure of corporate patent thicket networks and their evolutionary characteristics can be obtained. A panel regression model is used to empirically test the social network effect and the effect of patent thickets on the market value of firms in the context of patent cooperation. The findings show that patent thickets can discount the market value of enterprises. However, if a firm is at the center of patent cooperation, it can obtain more innovation resources. If it is at the intermediary of cooperation, it can absorb external knowledge and technology and occupy a richer structural hole, which can positively regulate the negative effect of the patent thicket. In addition, the negative effects of patent thickets are weaker for firms with more than five years of patent maintenance compared to those with less. Our study has important implications for improving the efficiency of patent cooperation and helping governments and firms to effectively cope with patent thickets.

COVID-19 research in management: An updated bibliometric analysis

The unprecedented impact of COVID-19 on the global economy as well as on the academic literature. Since early 2020, management researchers have made exceptional efforts to extend our understanding of the pandemic's effect on consumption, sourcing, the workplace, and corporate strategies. The present study uses a bibliometric design to analyze the extensive database of COVID-19 studies in management literature generated over a 2-year period. The analysis focused on the performance of research constituents, thematic analysis of the literature, categorization of the themes at a societal, organizational, and individual level, and finally, a deep analysis of future research calls in the body of literature.

What, Where, When and How of COVID-19 Patents Landscape: A Bibliometrics Review

Two years after COVID-19 came into being, many technologies have been developed to bring highly promising bedside methods to help fight this epidemic disease. However, owing to viral mutation, how far the promise can be realized remains unclear. Patents might act as an additional source of information for informing research and policy and anticipating important future technology developments. A comprehensive study of 3741 COVID-19-related patents (3,543 patent families) worldwide was conducted using the Derwent Innovation database. Descriptive statistics and social network analysis were used in the patent landscape. The number of COVID-19 applications, especially those related to treatment and prevention, continued to rise, accompanied by increases in governmental and academic patent assignees. Although China dominated COVID-19 technologies, this position is worth discussing, especially in terms of the outstanding role of India and the US in the assignee collaboration network as well as the outstanding invention portfolio in Italy. Intellectual property barriers and racist treatment were reduced, as reflected by individual partnerships, transparent commercial licensing and diversified portfolios. Critical technological issues are personalized immunity, traditional Chinese medicine, epidemic prediction, artificial intelligence tools, and nucleic acid detection. Notable challenges include balancing commercial competition and humanitarian interests. The results provide a significant reference for decision-making by researchers, clinicians, policymakers, and investors with an interest in COVID-19 control.