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on Intellectual Property Rights |
| By: | Bruno van Pottelsberghe; |
| Abstract: | Bruno van Pottelsberghe and Malwina Mejer argue that the consequences of the fragmentation' of the European patent system are more dramatic than the mere prohibitive costs of maintaining a patent in force in many jurisdictions. The authors first show that heterogeneous national litigation costs, practices and outcome induce a high level of uncertainty. But also that a high degree of managerial complexity results from systemic incongruities due to easier parallel imports', possible time paradoxes' and the de facto paradox of having EU-level competition policy and granting authority, ultimately facing national jurisdictional primacy on patent issues. |
| Date: | 2009–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bre:wpaper:236&r=ipr |
| By: | Fabio Maria Manenti (University of Padua); Stefano Comino (Università di Udine) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we present a theoretical model to study the characteristics and the commerciaI sustainability of dual licensing, an open source (OS) business strategy that has gained popularity among software vendors. With dual licensing, a firm releases the same software product under both a traditional proprietary license and an open souree one. We show that the decision to employ a dual licensing strategy occurs whenever the feedbacks of the open souree community are valuable enough compared to the quality of the software that the firm is able to develop in-house. Our analysis points to the centraI role of an appropriate managing of OS licenses in order to balance the pros and cons of "going open source" and to make this versioning strategy viable for software vendors; our analysis also suggests a possible explanation for the observed proliferation of open source licenses. |
| Keywords: | open source software, open source business models, embedded software, dual licensing, versioning, license proliferation |
| JEL: | L11 L17 L86 D45 |
| Date: | 2010–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pad:wpaper:0112&r=ipr |
| By: | Richard Jensen; Jerry Thursby; Marie C. Thursby |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a theoretical model of faculty consulting in the context of government and industry funding for research within the university, which then frames an empirical analysis of the funding and consulting of 458 individual faculty inventors from 8 major US universities. In the theory, firms realize that they free ride on government sponsored research of the faculty they hire as consultants and faculty realize their university research projects indirectly benefit from their firm experience. The model accounts for faculty quality, project characteristics, faculty share of license revenue from university research, and the university's research support. Empirically we find that government research funding is positively related to consulting, independent of faculty quality. We find that government and industry funding for university research are strategic complements as well as evidence of the ability of universities to leverage their research infrastructure to attract research funding. |
| JEL: | O31 O34 O38 |
| Date: | 2010–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15732&r=ipr |
| By: | Joseph P. Cook; Graeme Hunter; John A. Vernon |
| Abstract: | Generic utilization rates have risen substantially since the enactment of The Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act (Hatch-Waxman) in 1984. In the year Hatch-Waxman was enacted, generic utilization rates were 19 percent; in contrast, today, the generic utilization rate is approximately 70 percent. Striking a balance between access to existing medicines and access to yet-to-be-discovered (and developed) drugs, through research incentives, was the principal objective of this landmark legislation. However, given the current rate of generic utilization, it seems plausible, if not likely, that any balance achieved by the 1984 Act has since shifted away from research incentives and towards improved access, ceteris paribus. Among other factors, recent mandatory substitution laws in most states have driven up generic utilization rates. In the current paper, we employ semi-annual data from 1992 to 2008 to examine the link between generic utilization rates and real U.S. prescription drug prices. This link is important because previous research has identified a causal relationship between real drug prices in the U.S. and industry-level R&D investment intensity. We identify a statistically significant, positive relationship between generic utilization rates in the U.S. and real U.S. prescription drug prices. Specifically, we estimate an elasticity of real drug prices to generic utilization rates of -0.15. This finding, when coupled with previous empirical work on the determinants of pharmaceutical R&D intensity, suggests an elasticity of R&D to generic utilization rates of about 0.090. While the magnitude of this elasticity is modest, as theory would predict—the effect of greater generic erosion of brand sales at patent expiration is heavily discounted due to the long time horizon to generic erosion when an R&D project is in clinical development. However, because there has been a very substantial increase in generic utilization rates since 1984, the impact on R&D is nevertheless quite large. We explore this and other issues in the current paper. |
| JEL: | I11 I18 K0 L0 |
| Date: | 2010–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15723&r=ipr |