incentive schemes. In Section III we review optimal design issues for intellectual property, especially the question of patent … breadth, and in Section IV we turn to the special problems that arise when innovation is cumulative. In Section V, we …

higher rewards where "ideas are scarce." We then explore how rewards should be structured when the value of an innovation … comes from its applications, and ideas for the innovation may be more or less scarce than ideas for the applications. …

The trickle of business method patents issued by the United States Patent Office became a flood after the State Street … decision itself. This paper discusses the likely impact of these patents on innovation. It first reviews the facts about … business method and internet patents briefly and then explores what economists know about the relationship between the patent …

higher rewards where "ideas are scarce." We then explore how rewards should be structured when the value of an innovation … comes from its applications, and ideas for the innovation may be more or less scarce than ideas for the applications. …

Keywords: patents, innovation, oligopoly JEL codes: L13, O31. ABSTRACT: Many inventions, great and small, are … such cases? Patent law has struggled with this question for many years. The basic rule in the U.S. is that the patent is … some peculiar results. Suppose that Firm A achieves an invention and files for a patent. Slightly later, but before the …

support efficient R&D investment by duopolists racing to discover a single innovation generalizes to the structure that … the organization of R&D, the assessment of damages for patent infringement, and allocations of value in patent pools. …

Antitrust policy for the pooling of patents and other intellectual property rights has undergone a dramatic … developments in economics that provide a better understanding of the characteristics of patent pools that warrant antitrust … respect to patent pools until the publication by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission of Antitrust …

The trickle of business method patents issued by the United States Patent Office became a flood after the State Street … decision itself. This paper discusses the likely impact of these patents on innovation. It first reviews the facts about … business method and internet patents briefly and then explores what economists know about the relationship between the patent …

hardware and software require rights to a very large number of patents. One explanation for the large awards for patent …Very large awards and settlements for patent infringement have increased dramatically since the 1980s. A large fraction … multiple patents. This can lead to infringement damage awards and settlements that overestimate the patent’s contribution to …