welfare, when the effects on public health are taken into account. In particular, we study how the new international patent … and Lai (2004) on optimal patent protection, this paper examines the externality execrated by the intellectual property …

between the propensity to jointly own a patent and proximity in the product market; b) joint patents are associated with less …

effect of temporarily mitigating competition, and the negative effect of mandatory disclosure of a patent application … patent are negatively related as opposed to common intuition, (ii) in industries with imperfect appropriability in case of … secrecy the extent of the technological lead is positively associated with the propensity to patent, and that (iii) the …

We study the effect of the fragmentation of intellectual property rights on optimal patent design. The major finding is … requirements should be stronger than in the case of stand-alone innovation. This reduces the fragmentation of intellectual property …, which is socially costly. However, to preserve the incentives to innovate, if a patent is granted the strength of protection …

This paper investigates the role of patent protection in the global investment decisions of multinational firms. Using … comprehensive firm-level panel data of German multinationals, we investigate how changes in a host country’s patent protection … influence the extensive and intensive margin of foreign direct investment (FDI) decisions. We isolate the effect of patent …

The objective of this paper is to show the necessity of reviving the debate on the economic justifications for patent … patent protection, and on the other hand, we believe that major changes to the patent law should be considered. Critical … review of the discussion on patents shows that the weaknesses of many arguments for patent protection, as well as the …

From a firm’s perspective two competing forces are driving the decision to invest in innovation. On the one hand …, innovative performance is an important driver of profitability and growth. On the other hand, investments in innovation suffer … firms may protect their inventions by means of intellectual property rights, such as patents. By taking out a patent …

Recent work suggests that Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) — or “patent trolls” — are a new form of financial … intermediary. According to this view, individual patent holders are unable to contract with large manufacturers because they lack … the financial resources necessary to litigate against infringement. Since individual patent holders are heterogeneous in …

Without the confidence that patent rights can be enforced quickly and efficiently, when needed, the patent system will … not stimulate innovation. For this reason, governments, academics, international institutions and the private sector have … poured significant resources into gathering and analyzing statistics on patent enforcement over the last two decades. This …