nep-ipr New Economics Papers
on Intellectual Property Rights
Issue of 2019‒01‒28
seven papers chosen by
Giovanni Ramello
Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo Avogadro”

  1. The effect of intellectual property boxes on innovative activity & effective tax rates By Bornemann, Tobias; Laplante, Stacie K.; Osswald, Benjamin
  2. A taxonomy of firm-level IPR application practices to inform policy debates By Marcel Seip; Carolina Castaldi; Meindert Flikkema; Ard-Pieter de Man
  3. Patent Pools, Vertical Integration, and Downstream Competition By Markus Reisinger; Emanuele Tarantino
  4. Knowledge Remittances: Does Emigration Foster Innovation? By Thomas Fackler; Yvonne Giesing; Nadzeya Laurentsyeva
  5. Concordance and complementarity in Intellectual Property instruments By M. Grazzi; C. Piccardo; C. Vergari
  6. Intellectual Property and Taxation in Digital Platforms By Juan Manuel Sanchez-Cartas
  7. A Survey of Empirical Evidence on Patents and Innovation By Bhaven N. Sampat

  1. By: Bornemann, Tobias; Laplante, Stacie K.; Osswald, Benjamin
    Abstract: We investigate whether the adoption of an intellectual property box increases innovative activity and what type of firms benefit. We examine the adoption of the intellectual property box in Belgium because it allows us to cleanly identify the impact on innovative activity and effective tax rates. Our results indicate an overall increase in innovative activity as proxied by patent grants, the efficiency with which firms apply for and receive patents, and employment. We also provide evidence that, while firms with patents on average enjoy lower effective tax rates, the greatest financial benefits accrue to multinational firms without income shifting opportunities, followed by domestic firms. Multinational firms with income shifting opportunities do not significantly benefit from the intellectual property box.
    Keywords: IP boxes,tax incentive,tax avoidance,income shifting
    JEL: H21 H25
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:arqudp:234&r=all
  2. By: Marcel Seip; Carolina Castaldi; Meindert Flikkema; Ard-Pieter de Man
    Abstract: Current debates on the social returns of Intellectual Property Right (IPR) systems deal with the presumed negative effects of two practices: IPR bundling and the strong concentration of IPRs in certain firms and industries. These debates are hampered by the lack of empirical evidence on IPR application practices. This study presents unique and comprehensive data about firm-level IPR application practices in the Netherlands. We develop a taxonomy based on the firm-level variety and intensity of IPR applications. We identify five archetypes of IPR applicants: patent rookies, trademark rookies, IPR strategists, IPR specialists and IPR generalists. Our findings show that a few large firms in high-tech industries combine high IPR application variety and high IPR application intensity. However, high variety is also associated with low intensity and low variety with high intensity. For a large majority of the firms, IPR application is equivalent to single trademark application or the ad hoc application of another IPR. We discuss the implications of our findings for current IPR debates and for further research
    Keywords: Intellectual property rights; taxonomy; policy
    Date: 2019–01–17
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2019/03&r=all
  3. By: Markus Reisinger; Emanuele Tarantino
    Abstract: Patent pools are commonly used to license technologies to manufacturers. Whereas previous studies focused on manufacturers active in independent markets, we analyze pools licensing to competing manufacturers, allowing for multiple licensors and non-linear tariffs. We find that the impact of pools on welfare depends on the industry structure: Whereas they are procompetitive when no manufacturer is integrated with a licensor, the presence of vertically integrated manufacturers triggers a novel trade-off between horizontal and vertical price coordination. Specifically, pools are anticompetitive if the share of integrated firms is large, procompetitive otherwise. We then formulate information-free policies to screen anticompetitive pools.
    Keywords: patent pools and horizontal pricing agreements, complementary patents, vertical integration and restraints, antitrust policy
    JEL: K11 L41 L42 O34
    Date: 2018–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2018_057&r=all
  4. By: Thomas Fackler; Yvonne Giesing; Nadzeya Laurentsyeva
    Abstract: Does the emigration of skilled individuals necessarily result in losses for source countries due to the brain drain? Combining industry-level patenting and migration data from 32 European countries, we show that emigration in fact positively contributes to innovation in source countries. We use changes in the labour mobility legislation within Europe as exogenous variation to establish causality. By analysing patent citation data, we further provide evidence that these positive effects are driven by knowledge flows that are triggered by emigrants. While skilled migrants are not inventing in their home country anymore, they contribute to cross-border knowledge and technology diffusion and thus help less advanced countries to catch up to the technology frontier.
    Keywords: migration, innovation, knowledge spillovers, patent citations, EU enlargement
    JEL: F22 J61 O33 O31 O52
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7420&r=all
  5. By: M. Grazzi; C. Piccardo; C. Vergari
    Abstract: This work investigates the relationship between proxies of innovation activities, such as patents and trademarks, and firm performance in terms of revenues and growth. By resorting to the virtual universe of Italian manufacturing firms we provide a rather complete picture of the innovation activities of Italian firms, in terms of patents and trademarks, and we study whether the two instruments for protecting Intellectual Property (IP) exhibit complementarity or substitutability. In addition, and to our knowledge novel, we propose a measure of concordance (or proximity) between the patents and trademarks owned by the same firm and we then investigate whether such concordance appears to exert any effect on performance.
    JEL: O31 O34 L25
    Date: 2019–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp1127&r=all
  6. By: Juan Manuel Sanchez-Cartas
    Abstract: I study the impact of competition and taxation on the openness and the intellectual property policies of two-sided digital platforms. I model a market in which two platforms compete for users and developers. First, I find that higher competition shortens the period of exclusivity granted to developers but does not influence the degree of openness of a platform. However, the higher the degree of differentiation in the developers market, the less open the platforms are. Second, I analyze two types of taxes, ad valorem and unit taxes. Ad-valorem taxes have no effect on the length of the exclusivity period. However, they increase the degree of openness of the platform when levied on users. Unit taxes instead limit the degree of openness and increase the period of exclusivity when levied on the developers market. Lastly, I find that multi-homing reduces the exclusivity period, but does not change the qualitative effects of taxation. My findings suggest that the new digital tax proposed by the European Commission, that should come into force in 2020, may reduce openness and innovation levels in the European Union.
    Keywords: Two-sided markets, Digital Platforms, Taxation, Intellectual Property, Openness
    JEL: H22 L13 L51 L86 O34
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2019_02.rdf&r=all
  7. By: Bhaven N. Sampat
    Abstract: This report surveys the empirical literature from economics and related fields on patents and innovation. In particular, it reviews and synthesizes the empirical evidence on patents and first-generation innovation, the disclosure function of patents, and patents and follow-on innovation. The main results are summarized in fifteen charts.
    JEL: O34
    Date: 2018–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25383&r=all

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