We study the effect of the fragmentation of intellectual property rights on optimal patent design. The major finding is …, which is socially costly. However, to preserve the incentives to innovate, if a patent is granted the strength of protection … should be generally higher than in the stand-alone case. -- Intellectual Property Rights ; Fragmentation ; Patent …

patent property rights. Here we find that the initial missallocation of patent property rights is large and differs … substantially across patentees and technology fields. We also find that the probability of a patent being traded depends on a number … of factors - the age of the patent, the number of citations received by a given age, the patent generality and whether …