sufficiently better at judging an idea's value and if it is sufficiently more costly to patent low than high value ideas, VCs …-run performance, but also infl ates their acquisition prices, and lowers their acquirers' overall profits. Patent law usefulness …

We study the problem of an inventor who brings to the market an innovation that can be legally copied. Imitators may … 'enter' the market by copying the innovation at a cost or by buying from the inventor the knowledge necessary to reproduce … and use the invention. The possibility of contracting affects the need for patent protection. Our results reveal that: (i …

, rather than dynamic benefits from greater innovation. I develop a property-rights model of a supply relationship with two …

are known to all parties. When royalty payments are increasing in one’s patent portfolio, private information about the … simultaneous increase in the cost of padding, that is, a better filtering of patent applications; (iii) upstream firms have more … incentives to pad than vertically-integrated firms which internalize the fact that patent proliferation raises the share of …

We study how fragmentation of patent rights ('patent thickets') and the formation of the Court of Appeal for the … Federal Circuit (CAFC) affected the duration of patent disputes, and thus the speed of technology diffusion through licensing …. We develop a model of patent litigation which predicts faster settlement agreements when patent rights are fragmented and …

firm’s size on the incentives and behaviour of firms towards innovation. In particular we highlight the following findings … incentives to promote innovation in firms. (iii) Firm shareholders may have incentives to curtail innovation even if these …