The traditional argument that shorter product cycles favor trade secret over patenting is reviewed. A game theoretic model provides an argument that shorter product cycles can induce firms to file more patent applications. The firms may be trapped in a prisoners' dilemma where all firms would...

Setting an industry-wide standard is crucial for information and communication technologies for interoperability, compatibility and efficiency. To minimize holdup problems, patent holders are often required to ex-ante commit to licensing their technologies under Fair, Reasonable and...

Patent scope is probably one of the most debated issues in patent law generally and it has recently gained new contours thanks to the substantial scientific improvements in genetics and modern biology, which have resulted in the creation of what we now address as the biotech industry. Indeed,...

The decision to regulate involves the identification of markets where simple assignment of property rights is not sufficient to ensure satisfactory competitive results, usually because some type of market failure obtains. By contrast, if property rights are well defined when they are initially...

In a patent infringement suit, the alleged infringer wins with a ruling of either patent invalidity or non-infringement. It is ambiguous which of these outcomes is preferred by the alleged infringer. Invalidity may increase current-period competition, but simultaneously removes constraints to...

The recent years in the European Union are characterised by various initiatives on internationalisation of the State's powers of the EU Member States. This internationalisation can have different scenarios. The scenario that dominates currently pending legislation initiatives implements an...

Licensing is one of the main channels for technology transfer from foreign owned multinational enterprises (MNEs) to domestic plants. This transfer occurs within industries and across industries, which results in technology spillovers that can affect both intra- and inter-industry productivity....

The US case Akamai Technologies Inc v Limelight Networks Inc brought the patent world's attention to the issue of if and how a patentee may enforce a method claim against a party who performs some of the steps in a patented method but leaves other steps to be performed by a third party. The case...

We analyze in a two-phase model the optimal mix of ex ante experimentation and ex post learning for the dynamic adoption of activities with uncertain payoffs. In a first pre-introduction phase, costly experimentation is undertaken to decide whether to adopt the activity or abandon...

We identify welfare-optimal patent royalties in a model of costly imitation, entry and imperfect competition. When the social planner may impose a compulsory license, optimal royalties either blockade imitation, facilitating unregulated monopoly, or yield an aggregate-zero-profit "efficient"...