Software is a potentially excludable public good. It is possible, at some cost, to exclude non-paying users from its consumption by using copyright law or technological restraints. Licensing the software under proprietary license terms makes of it a private good, licensing it under the BSD does...

When the home country introduces a patent law after the winner of the patent race is known the country's welfare may rise only if the domestic firm wins. If the home country decides before the patent race ends, the welfare may be increased when the probability that the domestic firm wins is...

The role of intellectual property (IP) as an important value determinant is widely recognized. This article tries to quantify the role of IP in companies valuation by comparing a sample of biotechnology companies (46 companies included in the Genetic Engineering News Index:GEN-Dex) to the...

Intellectual Property Intensity (IPI) measures the weight of IP in the firm’s total market value. IPI has a positive (convex) functional relationship with Price to Book (P/B) ratio, and thus may provide additional economic insight to the empirical value-growth effect. Growth firms have higher...

In a model of sequential patent races, it is examined whether or not introducing a patent law in the home country is beneficial to the firms and the society as a whole given the foreign country already offers patent protection. Before the first patent race starts, the firms and the foreign...

This paper analyzes the effects of different sources of R&D funding and patent office attributes on the patenting process. Another important contribution is modeling the effect of a random delay in the ‘pendency’ time as a stochastic process and quantifying its effect on patenting. The...

The economics of information goods suggest the need for institutional intervention to address the problem of revenue extraction from investments in resources characterized by high fixed costs of production and low marginal costs of reproduction and distribution. Solutions to the appropriation...

La protection juridique des méthodes commerciales liées à Internet est très controversée. Est-il opportun de protéger des biens immatériels ou des idées ? N'est-ce pas menacer durablement le développement de la "nouvelle économie" ? N'est-ce pas brider l'activité inventive et...