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on Intellectual Property Rights |
| By: | Désiré Vencatachellum (HEC Montréal - [HEC Montréal]); Bruno Versaevel (GATE - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - [CNRS : UMR5824] - [Université Lumière - Lyon II] - [Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines]) |
| Abstract: | There is evidence that competing firms delegate R&D to the same independent profit-maximizing laboratory. We draw on this stylized fact to construct a model where two firms in the same industry offer transfer payments in exchange of user-specific R&D services from a common laboratory. Inter-firm and within-laboratory externalities affect the intensity of competition among delegating firms on the intermediate market for technology. Whether competition is relatively soft or tight is reflected by each firm's transfer payment offers to the laboratory. This in turn determines the laboratory's capacity to earn profits, R&D outcomes, delegating firms' profits, and social welfare. We compare the delegated R&D game to two other ones where firms (i) cooperatively conduct in-house R&D, and (ii) non-cooperatively choose in-house R&D. The delegated R&D game Pareto dominates the other two games, and the laboratory earns positive profits, only if within-laboratory R&D services are suffciently complementary but inter-firm spillovers are suffciently low. We find no room for policy intervention, because the privately profitable decision to delegate R&D, when the laboratory participates, always benefits consumers. |
| Keywords: | Common Agency ; externalities ; research and development |
| Date: | 2007–04–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:papers:halshs-00142520_v1&r=ipr |
| By: | Blind, Knut; Cremers, Katrin; Mueller, Elisabeth |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses whether strategic motives for patenting influence the characteristics of companies’ patent portfolios. We use the number of citations and oppositions to represent these characteristics. The investigation is based on survey and patent data from German companies. We find clear evidence that the companies’ patenting strategies explain the characteristics of their patent portfolios. First, companies using patents to protect their technological knowledge base receive a higher number of citations for their patents. Second, the motive of offensive – but not of defensive – blocking is related to a higher incidence of oppositions, whereas companies using patents as bartering chips in collaborations receive fewer oppositions to their patents. |
| Keywords: | strategic patenting, patent portfolio characteristics |
| JEL: | O32 O34 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5501&r=ipr |
| By: | Vianney Dequiedt (GAEL - Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquée de Grenoble - [INRA]); Bruno Versaevel (GATE - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - [CNRS : UMR5824] - [Université Lumière - Lyon II] - [Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines]) |
| Abstract: | Patent pools are cooperative agreements between several patent owners to bundle the sale of their respective licenses. In this paper we analyze their consequences on the speed of the innovation process. We adopt an ex ante perspective and study the impact of possible pool formation on the incentives to innovate. Because participation in the creation of a pool acts as a bonus reward on R&D activity, we show that a firm's investment pattern is upward sloping over time before pool formation. The smaller the set of initial contributors, the higher this effect. A pool formation mechanism based on a proposal by the industry and acceptance/refusal by the competition authority may induce overinvestment in early innovations. It also leads a forward looking regulator to delay the clearance date of the pool. This may result in a pool size that is suboptimal from an ex ante viewpoint. |
| Keywords: | competition policy ; licensing ; R&D races ; research and development |
| Date: | 2007–04–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:papers:halshs-00142497_v1&r=ipr |
| By: | Désiré Vencatachellum (HEC Montréal - [HEC Montréal]); Bruno Versaevel (GATE - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - [CNRS : UMR5824] - [Université Lumière - Lyon II] - [Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines]) |
| Abstract: | We use the French portion of the 2002 Community Innovation Survey to test how spillovers a®ect the likelihood that ¯rms cooperate in R&D. Unlike most existing empirical studies, our results clearly support well-established theoretical predictions of the industrial organization literature. We find that a firm which benefits from higher spillovers from her rivals is more likely to cooperate horizontally in R&D. Moreover, the impact of incoming spillovers on the likelihood of horizontal R&D cooperation is positive and statistically significant only when they are above a threshold. Both the value, and the precision of the estimates, increase with the information flow which firms report receiving from their competitors. |
| Keywords: | cooperation ; research and development ; spillovers |
| Date: | 2007–04–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:papers:halshs-00142511_v1&r=ipr |
| By: | Dequiedt, V.; Menière, Y.; Trommetter, M. |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a common analysis for a large set of multilateral agreements that are used to collectively manage intellectual property in industries as different as biotechnologies or information technologies. It discusses how these agreements, based on existing intellectual property institutions, can encourage innovation either by facilitating technology transfers or by improving the organization of collective innovation processes. In the first part we explain how the collective management of intellectual property rights can be used to facilitate arm’s length technology transfers. Its objective is then to facilitate the access to information about variety, to reduce negotiation costs and to optimize the management of prices. In the second part we explain how the collective management of intellectual property rights can be used to improve the innovation production processes by proposing a wide set of organizational structures ranging from centralized organizations that rely heavily on planning, to decentralized organizations that use incentives to motivate participants. As a conclusion, we highlight new challenges for competition policy generated by those tools. |
| Keywords: | INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHT;CONSORTIA;BIOTECHNOLOGY;OPEN SOURCE;SOFTWARE |
| JEL: | D23 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gbl:wpaper:200703&r=ipr |
| By: | Michael Fritsch (University of Jena, School of Busniess and Economics, Max Planck Institute of Economics Jena, and Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin)); Viktor Slavtchev (University of Jena, School of Busniess and Economics) |
| Abstract: | We assess the efficiency of regional innovation systems (RIS) in Germany by means of a knowledge production function. This function relates private sector research and development (R&D) activity in a region to the number of inventions that have been registered by residents of that region. Different measures and estimation approaches lead to rather similar assessments. We find that both spillovers within the private sector as well as from universities and other public research institutions have a positive effect on the efficiency of private sector R&D in the respective region. It is not the mere presence and size of public research institutions, but rather the intensity of interactions between private and public sector R&D that leads to high RIS efficiency. We find that relationship between the diversity of a regions’ industry structure and the efficiency of its innovation system is inversely u-shaped. Regions dominated by large establishments tend to be less efficient than regions with a lower average establishment size. |
| Keywords: | Knowledge, innovation, technical efficiency, spillovers, patents, regional analysis |
| JEL: | O31 O18 R12 |
| Date: | 2007–04–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2007-006&r=ipr |
| By: | Francisco Alcalá (Universidad de Murcia. Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico, Campus de Espinardo); Miguel González-Maestre (Universidad de Murcia. Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico, Campus de Espinardo) |
| Abstract: | We analyze artistic markets considering three key distinctive features that have been overlooked by the standard analysis on intellectual property. These features are the dynamic link between the current number of young artists and future high-quality artistic creation, Rosen’s superstars phenomenon, and the role played by promotion costs. Introducing them into an overlapping-generations model brings about a new perspective on the consequences for artistic creation of changes in the copyright term, progress in communication technologies favoring market concentration by stars, and the enlargement of markets. The conventional result that longer copyrights always stimulate artistic creation only holds as a particular case. |
| Keywords: | superstars, copyrights, innate abilities, allocation of talent. |
| JEL: | J44 J62 L82 O34 |
| Date: | 2006–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iei:wpaper:0606&r=ipr |
| By: | Petr Mariel (Universidad del País Vasco, Departamento EA III (Econometría y Estadística)); Susan Orbe (Universidad del País Vasco, Departamento EA III (Econometría y Estadística)) |
| Abstract: | The present article reexamines some of the issues regarding the benchmarking of patents using the NBER data base on U.S. patents by generalizing a parametric citation model and by estimating it using GAM methodology. The main conclusion is that the estimated effects differ considerably from sector to sector, and the differences can be estimated nonparametrically but not by the parametric dummy variable approach. |
| Keywords: | USPTO, Patent benchmarking, GAM |
| JEL: | O3 C14 |
| Date: | 2007–04–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehu:biltok:200702&r=ipr |
| By: | Rajah RASIAH |
| Abstract: | This paper seeks to examine the importance of ownership in R&D intensities and export ownership in the automotive parts firms in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Taiwan. Consistent with the portfolio and ownership, location and internationalization theories of foreign direct investment about asset specific advantages, the pooled regressions show higher R&D intensities in local firms than in foreign firms. Export-orientation was only highly correlated with R&D intensities in the local samples. The results also show foreign ownership to be highly correlated with export-orientation in the pooled regressions but not in the individual country regressions. |
| Date: | 2007–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:07025&r=ipr |