We model “patent privateering”—whereby producing firms sell patents to patent assertion entities (PAEs) which then license them under the threat of litigation—in a bargaining game. PAEs can negotiate higher licensing fees than producing firms, because they cannot be counter-sued for...

The value of innovation during crises can be extraordinary. While high payoffs increase the rate of innovation, they also induce a strategic distortion in its direction. High payoffs attract entry by innovators, making the R\&D supply side more competitive. This competition endogenously shifts...

We study contests with technological uncertainty, where contestants can invest in different technologies of uncertain value. The principal can disclose an informative yet noisy public signal about the merit of each technology, which can focus investments into more promising ones or increase...

Should a challenger face rivals simultaneously or sequentially? If sequentially, should he face weak or strong rivals first? To address these questions, we study signaling in dynamic contests, where a privately-informed challenger faces a sequence of rivals. Against heterogenous opponents, the...

A privately-informed applicant seeks approval for a proposal from a receiver who only values good ideas. Examining the proposal could uncover hard evidence about the idea's quality. Without hard evidence, giving the benefit of the doubt salvages good ideas but also prompts obfuscation...

Private antitrust litigation often involves a dominant firm being accused of exclusionary conduct by a smaller rival. In such cases, the defendant generally has a much larger financial stake in the outcome. We explore the implications of this asymmetry in a model of litigation with endogenous...

Patent holdup occurs when a patent holder extracts higher royalties ex post (after the payor has committed to use of the patented technology) than it could have negotiated ex ante, where the difference is not explained by an increase in the technology's value. To date, the literature principally...

The “monopoly” authorized by the Patent Act refers to the exclusionary power of individual patents. That is not the same thing as the acquisition of individual patent rights into portfolios that dominate a market, something that the Patent Act never justifies and that the antitrust laws...

Startup acquisitions by dominant incumbents, especially in high-tech, have recently attracted significant attention. Many researchers and practitioners worry about harms to competition or innovation. However, there has been very little antitrust enforcement in this area. This is emblematic of a...