This paper analyzes the optimal protection strategy for an innovator of a complex innovation who faces the risk of imitation by a competitor. We suppose that the innovation can be continuously fragmented into sub-innovations. We characterize the optimal mix of patent and trade secrets when the...

This paper looks at the special characteristics of radical inventions. It tries to identify those variables that differentiate radical inventions from non-radical inventions. Since radical inventions are very important for the economy as a whole and for the individual firm performances,...

The paper analyses the contribution of 'golden papers' - seminal works whose ideas remain as fresh and relevant today as when they were first published decades ago - and which continue to dominate academic discourse among successive generations of scholars. The authors analyse why two works...

The global pharmaceutical sector is highly patent intensive, and firms rely on product, process and formulation patents to protect their innovations. Intellectual property rights on pharmaceutical products, as contained in the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights...

When companies decide to engage in technology transfer through licensing to other firms, they have two basic options: to use standard licensing contracts or to set-up more elaborate partnership-embedded licensing agreements. We find that broader partnership-embedded licensing agreements are...

This study develops a research and development (R&D)–based growth model with basic and applied research to analyze the growth and welfare effects of two patent instruments: (i) the patentability of basic R&D and (ii) the division of profit between basic and applied researchers. We find that...

Patents may assist trade in technology either by protecting buyers against the expropriation of the idea by third parties (the appropriation effect) or by enabling sellers to more frankly disclose the idea during the negotiation phase (the disclosure effect). We test for the presence of both...

The paper undertakes a detailed mapping out of the sectoral system of innovation of India's pharmaceutical industry. The industry is one of the most innovative industries in the Indian manufacturing sector. The innovation system of the industry has three strong pillars: very pro active...

This paper builds a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of endogenous growth that generates large medium-frequency cycles while robustly matching the near trend-stationary path of observed output. This requires a model in which standard business cycle shocks lead to highly...

We present an analytical solution to the lab-equipment R&D growth model with an exogenous rate of imitation and apply it to study the optimal level of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection. This has already been studied in Kwan and Lai (2003); however, a mistake in writing out the...