Little Firms and Big Patents : The Incentives to Disclose Competencies

This paper offers a theoretical treatment of information disclosure through patenting. We consider a signaling model in which two domestic firms disclose their competencies to a foreign firm. Conditions are discussed under which separating and pooling equilibria occur, together with a domination-based refinement. Depending on the payoff situation of the foreign firm, separating and semi-separating equilibria occur in which the firm with the higher competencies discloses. We show that subsidizing the costs of patent applications has no impact on the outcome