The paper investigates competition in price schedules among vertically differentiated producers. First order price discrimination leading to personalized prices are the perfect equilibrium of the two-stage game where firms choose at the first stage to commit or not to a uniform price and compete...

This paper investigates the choice of an intellectual protection regime for a process innovation. We set up a multi-stage model in which choosing between patent and trade secrecy is affected by three parameters : the patent strength defined as the probability that the right is upheld by the...

This article shows how European courts have managed tensions between antitrust and intellectual protection in three areas: (1) Parallel imports and market segmentation; (2) Refusals to supply essential inputs protected by patents and copyrights; (3) Forms of conduct by copyright collectives.

Ce chapitre est consacré aux aspects microéconomiques de l'innovation. La première partie détaille les mécanismes élémentaires qui poussent les entreprises à innover et les freins à leur effort quand l'appropriation des résultats n'est pas parfaite. La deuxième partie présente la...

Economic theory views patents as policy instruments aimed at fostering innovation and diffusion. Three major implications are drawn regarding current policy debates. First, patents may not be the most effective means of protection for inventors to recover R&D investments when imitation is costly...

The paper investigates the choice of a licensing mechanism by the holder of a patent whose validity may be challenged. Focusing fi…rst on weak patents, i.e. patents that have a high probability of being invalidated by a court if challenged, we show that the patent holder fi…nds it optimal to...

The contemporary tensions between patents and competition no longer reside in the traditional trade-off between the exclusionary right given to an inventor to encourage innovation, and the welfare loss induced by the market power associated to this right. They rather result from three important...