In the last decades, technologies became more complex which increased the degree of uncertainty in R&D. To overcome the uncertainty, firms frequently engage in R&D collaborations, e.g., Research Joint Ventures (RJVs), and licensing agreements. While RJVs are well explored in the literature, very...

Licensing in a patent thicket allows firms to either avoid or resolve hold-up. Firms' R&D incentives depend on whether they license ex ante or ex post. We develop a model of a patent portfolio race, which allows for endogenous R&D efforts, to study firms' choice between ex ante and ex post...

In a patent thicket licensing provides a mechanism to either avoid or resolve hold-up. Firms' R&D incentives will differ depending on how licensing is used. In this paper we study the choice between ex ante licensing to avoid hold-up and ex post licensing to resolve it. Building on a theoretical...

Complex high technology industries are increasingly affected by patent thickets in which firms' patents mutually block the use of important technologies. Firms facing patent thickets patent intensively to acquire bargaining chips and use licensing to ensure freedom to operate. Such licensing...

We investigate whether licensing agreements are an appropriate tool for firms to resolve blocking and hold-up problems in high-tech industries. We use a novel and comprehensive database on licensing agreements as well as detailed firm-level information on revenues and patents in the...

Using a novel database on prediscovery licensing agreements (one type of R&D cooperation) as well as detailed firm-level and semiconductor market-specific information, we estimate the impact of prediscovery licensing agreements (PDLAs) on innovation and product market efficiency. Our results...