On May 30, 2017, the Supreme Court held that the initial authorized sale of a patented item within or outside the U.S. "exhausts" all rights of the patentee to that item under the Patent Act. This decision goes against the Government's position that a foreign sale authorized by the U.S. patentee...

We examine the Nash equilibria of a game where two national governments set patent breadth strategically. Broader patents make R&D more attractive, but the effect on static efficiency is nonmonotonic. In a North.South model, where only the North can innovate, harmonization of patent breadth...

We empirically assess international corporate tax avoidance by strategic location of innovative output. The analysis draws on the universe of patent applications to the European Patent Office linked with data on multinational entities (MNEs) in Europe. Four findings emerge: Firstly, patent...

We study the 1956 consent decree against the Bell System to investigate whether patents held by a dominant firm are harmful for innovation and if so, whether compulsory licensing can provide an effective remedy. The consent decree settled an antitrust lawsuit that charged Bell with having...

This paper develops a model of patent trolls to understand various litigation strategies employed by nonpracticing entities (NPE). We show that when a NPE faces multiple potential infringers who use related technologies, it can gain a credible threat to litigate even when it has no such...

Within the policy debate, there is a fear that large incumbent firms buy small firms' inventions to ensure that they are not used in the market. We show that such "acquisitions for sleep" can occur if and only if the quality of a process invention is small; otherwise, the entry profit will be...

The paper discusses the effects of the corporate tax on local R&D expenditures by multinational enterprises (MNEs) when income from intellectual property (IP) may or may not benefit from a special IP regime. Our model shows that an increase of the standard corporate tax may have positive effects...

We study the question whether a holder of standard essential patents (SEPs) should be allowed to choose the level in the value chain at which to offer a FRAND license to its SEPs. We give a pos-itive answer to this question for two reasons. First, the SEP holder and the social planner tend to...

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is responsible for almost all of the 570,000 new cases of cervical cancer and approximately 311,000 deaths per year. HPV vaccination is an integral component of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) global strategy to fight the disease. However, high vaccine prices...

Patent boxes significantly reduce the tax rate applied to income earned from a patent. Existing work finds that those reductions increase the number of patents. That said, not all patents are equally novel. In particular, the patent box encourages the submission of patents of marginal novelty, a...