The standard view of patents emphasizes their dynamic efficiency. It considers that, by providing firms with incentives to invest in R&D and to disclose their knowledge, patents encourage innovation and increase social welfare in the long run. Yet, a growing body of literature opposes this view...

Les investissements en R&D des entreprises sont sources d’externalités positives, justifiant ainsi les politiques d’innovation basées sur un mélange de subventions à la recherche et de propriété intellectuelle. Ces deux instruments correspondent à une manière d’encourager les...

Cet article présente une expérience naturelle où une commune française a décidé de sanctionner financièrement les parents venant chercher leurs enfants avec retard dans les centres de loisirs communaux. Après un an de mise en oeuvre de ce dispositif, contrairement aux conclusions...

Performance related pay is playing an increasing role in scientific research. This development, which applies the results of standard economic theories (the principal-agent model), aims at increasing incentives and thus productivity in science. The objective of this paper is then to cross the...

The traditional perception of patents puts the emphasis on their importance to exclude imitators and to restore incentives to invent. This view is far too restrictive and at variance with many empirical and theoretical works. We show that these contradictions can be overcome by shifting from a...

Economic studies that aim at comparing the patent system social efficiency versus an ex-post reward system rest on a traditional view of patents. They make the hypothesis that firms use the patent system only in order to be granted a short-term monopoly rent and therefore that patents lead to...

This paper explores entrepreneurship in biotech through the in depth analysis of four new ventures located in the Upper-Rhine Biovalley. One of the strengths of this paper is the presence of both successful cases of entrepreneurship and of cases of failures. This gives the opportunity to discuss...

Au-delà de ses fonctions en termes de protection et de financement de l’innovation, le brevet est aussi un instrument de médiation et un support d’interactions. Dans le cas du développement des nouveaux vaccins issus du génie génétique, nous montrons qu’il est une composante...

En France, les brevets sont attribués au premier à déposer la demande et non pas au premier inventeur. Cependant, ce système dit de first to file est accompagné par la règle de droit de possession antérieure qui accorde au premier inventeur le droit de continuer à utiliser son invention...

This paper proposes a unified conceptual framework to analyse the multiple role and consequences of patents in the case of biotechnology research tools. We argue that the knowledge/information and independent/complementary nature of research tools define heterogeneous frameworks in which the...