A current refrain in patent policy discourse is that “overly-broad” patents of “dubious validity” retard innovation. We briefly review expressions of the thesis to show that they reduce to the allegation that disagreements over enforceable patent scope and/or validity harm innovation....

The digital transformation "revolutionizes" entire economies and societies. It can be interpreted as a Schumpeterian technological and economic revolution that fits well into his "Theory of Economic Development" written more than 100 years ago. This paper analyzes three current policy debates...

This paper investigates the R&D allocation and output decisions of a profit-maximising monopolist developing a science-based family of products or processes. A comparison of the numerical solution for a model with incremental product innovation, and that with incremental process innovation,...

Research background: It has been one decade since the transposition deadline regarding the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. The EU´s growth strategy, Europe 2020, and all EU member states are committed to smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth, to the single internal market and to R&D...

Many analysts have argued that energy efficiency investments offer an enormous “win-win” opportunity to both reduce negative externalities and save money. This overview paper presents a simple model of investment in energy-using capital stock with two types of market failures: first,...

The conventional antitrust wisdom is that the formation of patent pools is welfare en- hancing when patents are complementary, since the pool avoids a double-marginalization problem associated with independent licensing. The focus of this paper is on (down- stream) product development and...

The conventional wisdom is that the formation of patent pools is welfare enhancing when patents are complementary, since the pool avoids a double-marginalization problem associated with independent licensing. This conventional wisdom relies on the effects that pooling has on downstream prices....

Basic innovations are often fundamental to the development of applications that maybe developed by other innovators. In this setting, we investigate whether patent pools canrectify the lack of incentives for developers to invest in applications. Following Green andScotchmer (1995), we also...

Research and Development (R&D) and innovation are crucial features of the seed industry. To supportlarge R&D investments by the private sector, strong intellectual property rights, such as patents, arenecessary. The exclusivity granted by patents naturally creates market power positions and...