|
on Intellectual Property Rights |
| By: | Manel Antelo (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela) |
| Abstract: | A patent holder owning a two-period lasting innovation is unable to push it into the market, so it is licensed to a downstream user with production capabilities to market it. The production cost of this firm can be low or high, but the patent holder has only a prior on this fact |
| Keywords: | Licensing, asymmetric information, screening, signaling |
| JEL: | D82 L12 L13 L14 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cea:doctra:e2010_05&r=ipr |
| By: | Bouguezzi, Fehmi; EL ELJ, Moez |
| Abstract: | The present paper studies and compares different vertical integration structures on consumers and total surplus with licensing by mean of a fixed fee in two successive homogeneous-good Cournot duopolies where one of the firms in each market has a different cost-reducing innovation. The key difference between the present model and models in the existing literature is that here we suppose the existence of two different patents in upstream and downstream markets. In each market we find two firms: the patent holding firm and a non innovative firm. In upstream market, the innovative firm owns an innovation allowing to reduce the input marginal production cost. In downstream market the innovative firm owns an innovation allowing to reduce marginal cost of transforming the input into output. We discuss different structures of vertical integration and we show that consumer surplus and total surplus are depending of cost-reducing innovation in upstream and downstream markets and the structure of vertical integration. |
| Keywords: | Cournot successive markets; Fee licensing; Vertical integration; process innovation |
| JEL: | D23 O32 O31 L22 L24 |
| Date: | 2009–06–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:22212&r=ipr |
| By: | Frauke G. Braun; Liz Hooper; Robert Wand; Petra Zloczysti |
| Abstract: | Better understanding the innovative process of renewable energy technologies is important for tackling climate change. Though concentrating solar power is receiving growing interest, innovation studies so far have explored innovative activity in solar technologies in general, ignoring the major differences between solar photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies. This study relies on patent data to examine international innovative activity in concentrating solar power technologies. Our unique contribution, based on engineering expertise and detailed datawork, is a classification system matching solar thermal technologies to the International Patent Classification (IPC) system. To this end we suggest a narrowly defined set of IPC classes and a broader one of technologies relevant to CSP, but not exclusively so. We moreover exploit information from three international patent offices, the European, the United States and the Japanese patent office. Innovative activity in narrowly defined CSP technologies has experienced an early boom before 1980 and only recently showed some signs of more activity - a pattern closely resembling the R&D support path. R&D and innovation are concentrated in few high-tech countries - such as the U.S. or Germany. Large CSP potential is not a sufficient condition for innovation, only developed countries such as Australia with both CSP potential and adequate economic and scientific capabilities are found to be among the group of relevant innovators. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, patent data, solar technologies, climate change |
| JEL: | O31 Q42 Q54 Q55 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp994&r=ipr |
| By: | Frauke G. Braun; Jens Schmidt-Ehmcke; Petra Zloczysti |
| Abstract: | This paper studies technological change in renewable energies, providing empirical evidence on the determinants of innovative activity with a special emphasis on the role of knowledge spillovers. We investigate two major renewable energy technologies - wind and solar - across a panel of 21 OECD countries over the period 1978 to 2004. Spillovers may occur at the national level, either within the same technology field or economic sector (intra-sectoral spillovers) or in related technologies or sectors (inter-sectoral spillovers), or at the international level. We find that innovation is strongly driven by knowledge spillovers, especially those occurring at the national level. Wind and solar technologies exhibit distinct innovation characteristics: both are stimulated by intra-sectoral spillovers, but respond differently to inter-sectoral spillovers, which are only influential in the case of wind technology. We also find evidence that public R&D stimulates innovation, particularly in solar technologies. |
| Keywords: | Technological change, renewable energy, patents, knowledge spillover, climate change, innovation |
| JEL: | O31 Q42 Q55 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp993&r=ipr |
| By: | Borota, Teodora (Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Recent evidence on world trade patterns reveals North-South specialization across products of the same industries and product groups but different quality, which is not matched by the predictions of traditional and new trade theory. This paper analyzes a model of North-South trade and endogenous growth through innovation and imitation that can predict the observed trade patterns. The model is used to re-examine the impact of trade and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection on both the innovation in the North and the imitational lag of the South. Opening to trade increases the growth rate and welfare of both regions, but results in a larger lag in the quality level of the South. With free trade the quality lag of the South is positive even with no IPR protection as a result of a revealed comparative advantage in lower quality goods production and trade. This contradicts the common predictions of Southern take-over of the whole industries due to bad IPR enforcement. Stronger IPR protection has a negative effect on growth and deteriorates the lag of the South, but the welfare effects of the alternative IPR policy instruments may be different. |
| Keywords: | North-South trade; quality heterogeneity; endogenous growth; innovation and imitation; intellectual property rights |
| JEL: | F12 F43 O31 O33 O34 |
| Date: | 2010–04–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2010_006&r=ipr |
| By: | Michael D. Makowsky (Department of Economics, Towson University); David M. Levy (Department of Economics, George Mason University) |
| Abstract: | We build a multi-agent model of endogenous technical change in which heterogeneous investments in patented knowledge generate Pareto-Levy and lognormal distributed returns to investment in research from very weak distributional assumptions. Firms produce a homogenous good and a public stock of knowledge accumulates from the expired patents of privately produced knowledge. Increasing returns to scale are derivative of endogenously produced technology, but the market remains competitive due to imperfect information and costly household search. The interaction of heterogeneous knowledge, research investment, revenues, and search outcomes across agents endogenously generates the empirically observed but seemingly idiosyncratic Pareto- Levy and lognormal mixture distribution of market returns. These distributional characteristics have ramifications for endogenous growth models given the importance of extreme values and market leaders in technological advancement. Average growth rates in the model have a global maximum at a finite, non-zero patent length. The distribution of growth rates is characterized by “fat tails.” The variance of growth rates increases with patent length. |
| Keywords: | patents, endogenous growth, increasing returns to scale, price dispersion, search, heterogeneous agents. |
| JEL: | C63 L11 O33 D83 |
| Date: | 2010–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tow:wpaper:2010-10&r=ipr |