Patents have long been regarded as the 'gold standard' of intellectual property protection. In 'Little patents and big secrets: managing intellectual property', Anton and Yao (2004) call this traditional view into question by finding that firms keep their most important innovations secret. This...

Traditionally patents are seen as the gold standard for intellectual property protection. But, in line with empirical findings that secrecy is considered more important for appropriating returns, recent theories predict that firms keep their most important inventions secret. This article...

The database directive, initiated by the European Commission in 1992 and due to be finalised in the near future, establishes a two-tiered system of protection, amending copyright with a sui generis rule that grants protection against unfair extraction. The terms of protection are extended if the...

Policymakers all over the world claim: no innovation without protection. For more than a century, critics have objected that the case for intellectual property is far from clear. This paper uses a game theoretic model to organise the debate. It is possible to model innovation as a prisoner's...

Software is a good with very special economic characteristics. Taking a general definition of software as its starting-point, this article systematically elaborates the central qualities of the commodity which have implications for its production and cost structure, the demand, the...

We introduce an analytical framework close to the canonical model of platfirm competition investigated by Rochet and Tirole (2006) to study pricing decisions in two-sided markets when two or more platfirms are needed simultaneously for the successful completion of a transaction. The model...

Traditionally patents are seen as the gold standard for intellectual property protection. But, in line with empirical findings that secrecy is considered more important for appropriating returns, recent theories predict that firms keep their most important inventions secret. This article...

Patents have long been regarded as the 'gold standard' of intellectual property protection. In "Little patents and big secrets: managing intellectual property", Anton and Yao (2004) call this traditional view into question by finding that firms keep their most important innovations secret. This...

Globally, real estate trade is highly regularized. Usually, the market value is not negotiated simply between the seller and potential buyer but based on an assessment performed by a professional valuer, known as a surveyor or appraiser. This paper inquires about the economic role of valuers in...

We investigate whether patents that are jointly held by legally independent companies help sustain product-market collusion. We use a simple model of repeated interactions to show that joint patents can serve collusive purposes. Our model generates two testable predictions: when joint patents...