nep-ipr New Economics Papers
on Intellectual Property Rights
Issue of 2018‒07‒30
seven papers chosen by
Giovanni Ramello
Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo Avogadro”

  1. Optimal Cross-Licensing Arrangements: Collusion versus Entry Deterrence By Choi, Jay Pil; Gerlach, Heiko
  2. Secrets for sale? Innovation and the nature of knowledge in an early industrial district: the Potteries, 1750-1851 By Lane, Joseph
  3. Highly skilled migration and the internationalization of knowledge By Claudia Noumedem Temgoua
  4. The conflict between U.S. patent protection and technological innovation By Wade M. Chumney; David Wasieleski; E Günter Schumacher
  5. Strategic Declaration of Standard Essential Patents By AOKI Reiko; ARAI Yasuhiro
  6. Intellectual Monopoly in Global Value Chains By Cédric Durand; William Milberg
  7. Plant Breeders' Rights, Patents, and Incentives to Innovate By Adrien Hervouet; Corinne Langinier

  1. By: Choi, Jay Pil (Michigan State University, Department of Economics); Gerlach, Heiko (University of Queensland)
    Abstract: This paper analyzes optimal cross-licensing arrangements between incumbent firms in the presence of potential entrants. The optimal cross-licensing royalty rate trades off incentives to sustain a collusive outcome vis-a-vis incentives to deter entry with the threat of patent litigation. We show that a positive cross-licensing royalty rate, which would otherwise relax competition and sustain a collusive outcome, dulls incentives to litigate against entrants. Our analysis can shed light on the puzzling practice of royalty free cross-licensing arrangements between competing firms in the same industry as such arrangements enhance incentives to litigate against any potential entrants and can be used as entry-deterrence mechanism.
    Keywords: cross-licensing arrangements; patent litigation; collusion; entry deterrence
    JEL: D43 L13 O30
    Date: 2018–07–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:msuecw:2018_002&r=ipr
  2. By: Lane, Joseph
    Abstract: This paper investigates innovation and knowledge in the North Staffordshire Potteries during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It evaluates new empirical evidence of formal and informal patterns of knowledge creation and dissemination in order to highlight tensions between forms of open knowledge sharing and the appropriation of returns to innovative activity. By presenting new patent data it shows that formal protection was not a widespread strategy in the industry. It uses patent specifications to determine what specific types of knowledge were, and could be, patented in the district, and by whom. A range of sources are used to demonstrate evidence of innovation and knowledge appropriation outside of the patent system. The paper identifies distinct types of knowledge in the industry and shows how differences in these led to a range of strategies being employed by potters, with the role of secrecy highlighted as a particularly prevalent and effective strategy.
    Keywords: Industrial Revolution; Intellectual Property; Patents; Innovation; Earthenware; Industrial District; Technology; Knowledge
    JEL: D83 L61 N63 N73 N91 O34
    Date: 2018–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:wpaper:89386&r=ipr
  3. By: Claudia Noumedem Temgoua
    Abstract: This paper investigates the role of Chinese and Indian highly skilled diaspora in the internationalization of knowledge networks, for a sample of OECD destination countries. We mainly focus on two types of knowledge networks: co-inventorship and co-authorship. We jointly exploit country-level data on highly skilled migration and information on co-authorship and co-inventorship from publication and patent data. Based on a gravity model regression analysis, we find that OECD country pairs hosting sizeable portions of the Indian or Chinese highly skilled diasporas tend to collaborate more on publications and patents, after controlling for other migration trends. When extending the analysis to other countries, we find similar results for Vietnam, Pakistan and Iran.
    Keywords: migration, highly skilled, publications, R&D cooperation, diffusion, patent
    JEL: C8 F22 J61 O31 O33
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grt:wpegrt:2018-16&r=ipr
  4. By: Wade M. Chumney (CSUN - California State University, Northridge); David Wasieleski (ICN Business School, Duquesne University [Pittsburgh]); E Günter Schumacher (ICN Business School, CEREFIGE - Centre Européen de Recherche en Economie Financière et Gestion des Entreprises - UL - Université de Lorraine)
    Abstract: Criticisms of patent laws for technological innovations in the United States reveal a multifaceted milieu of problems centered around the protection of short-term economic gain and individual property rights. In this article, we consider this a conflict between current patent laws and the innovation capabilities of organizations. We propose a solution that enables the company to assure its long-term survival in the face of these restrictions. This presumes that the firm will at least maintain its innovation capacities while preserving the company's ethical values and those of its social environment. We offer a theoretical model that is designed to help managers and policymakers reorient their governance strategies for managing the innovation process, using the "ethics of responsibility," which establishes the link to individual moral values at the beginning of a governance process as well as the consequences of a decision. Our integrated causal model of ethical innovation for patents is presented and implications for global organizations and possible solutions for patent law process failure are offered.
    Keywords: U.S.,technological innovation,patent protection,conflict
    Date: 2017
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01768893&r=ipr
  5. By: AOKI Reiko; ARAI Yasuhiro
    Abstract: We examine how the ex-post assessment of standard essential patents (SEPs) affects the patent holder's strategic incentive to declare SEPs. While declaration guarantees inclusion in the standard, it requires commitment to license under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. We consider two forms of essentiality assessment: (i) by an independent organization and (ii) by the courts during a patent dispute or a challenge initiated by a standard implementer. Assessment by an independent organization can eliminate declared patents with low essentiality. Assessment through a dispute can decrease the number of both declared and non-declared (i.e., non-FRAND-encumbered) patents and these different trade-offs affect the rights holder's strategic declaration incentive. We obtain the following results. First, there is less declaration when there is ex-post assessment of either type compared with no assessment. Second, there is less declaration with assessment by an independent organization than with assessment through disputes. We also show that a rights holder with high essentiality patents sets a higher declaration rate than one with low essentiality patents.
    Date: 2018–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:18035&r=ipr
  6. By: Cédric Durand (Centre d'Économie Paris Nord, Université Paris 13); William Milberg (Department of Economics, New School for Social Research)
    Abstract: More than two decades of scholarship on global value chains (GVCs) has reshaped our understanding of the global economy while tracking the international fragmentation of productive process and its socioeconomic consequences. In this paper we focus on the effort by lead firms to capture market power in the provision of and production of intangible assets. The analysis builds on Pagano’s (2014) notion of “intellectual monopoly”, where government protections of intellectual property have the effect of locking in the monopoly power from intangible asset creation. We extend it to the presence of scale economies and network externalities associated with the production of intangible assets.
    Keywords: Global Value Chains, Intellectual Property Rights, Intangible Assets
    JEL: D43 F13 F23
    Date: 2018–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:new:wpaper:1807&r=ipr
  7. By: Adrien Hervouet (GAEL - Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquée de Grenoble - Grenoble INP - Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes); Corinne Langinier (University of Alberta [Edmonton])
    Abstract: Both patents and Plant Breeders' Rights (PBRs) can protect plant innovations. Unlike patents, PBRs allow farmers to save part of their harvest to replant. We analyze the impact of this exemption on prices and innovation in a monopoly setting. In a PBR regime, a monopolist might let farmers self-produce, and he over-or under-invests compared to socially optimal investments. Under a PBR and patent regime, large (small) innovations are more likely to be patented (protected with PBRs), but self-production is not completely prevented, private investments are often socially optimal, and incentives to innovate are boosted. However, overall effects on welfare are ambiguous.
    Keywords: seed saving,plant breeders' rights,durable good,innovation,patents
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01808195&r=ipr

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