Licensing in a Vertically Separated Industry

The literature on technology licensing has ignored the importance of market power of the input supplier. In this paper we examine the impact of licensing in the downstream industry when the firms in the upstream industry have market power. We show that licensing in the downstream industry can make the upstream industry more competitive. However, licensing in the downstream industry is profitable if and only if licensing changes the concentration in the upstream industry. We also show that a monopolist in the final goods market has the incentive for licensing if licensing changes the market structure of the upstream industry.