We examine the Nash equilibria of a game where two national governments set patent breadth strategically. Broader … North can innovate, harmonization of patent breadth lowers welfare relative to the Nash equilibrium. When both countries can … innovate, harmonization toward narrower patent breadth may raise world welfare …

This paper develops a model of patent trolls to understand various litigation strategies employed by nonpracticing …

This paper analyzes patent pools and their effects on innovation incentives. It is shown that the pro …-competitive effects of patent pools for complementary patents naturally extend for dynamic innovation incentives. However, this simple … case, the licensing fees reflect the strength of patents. Patent pools of complementary patents can be used to discourage …

We construct a tractable general equilibrium model of cumulative innovation and growth, in which new ideas strictly … lower than the social planner's benchmark, which suggests a role for patent policy. We focus on a “non-infringing inventive … the rate of innovation, as well as a separate optimal required inventive step that maximizes welfare, with the former …

patentability standards at PTOs (Patent and Trademark Offices awarding so-called bad patents), not only “false innovators” have the … chance of being granted patents but also, and more interestingly, “true innovators” are forced to patent more intensively … distortions caused by bad patents. Moreover, we show that introducing a two-tiered patent system is unlikely to improve market …

This paper analyzes the optimal protection strategy for an innovator of a complex innovation who faces the risk of … imitation by a competitor. We suppose that the innovation can be continuously fragmented into sub-innovations. We characterize … the optimal mix of patent and trade secrets when the innovator faces a strict novelty requirement and can only patent a …

This paper develops a theory of patent portfolios in which firms accumulate an enormous amount of related patents in … infringe on other firms' patent portfolios. We investigate how litigation incentives for the holders of patent portfolios … impact the incentives to introduce new products and draw welfare implications. We also consider a patent portfolio …

This paper investigates the choice of an intellectual protection regime for a process innovation. We set up a multi …-stage model in which choosing between patent and trade secrecy is affected by three parameters: the patent strength defined as the … probability that the right is upheld by the court, the cost of imitating a patented innovation relative to the cost of imitating a …