This paper investigates the choice of an intellectual protection regime for a process innovation. We set up a multi-stage model in which choosing between patent and trade secrecy is affected by three parameters : the patent strength defined as the probability that the right is upheld by the...

This paper investigates the choice of an intellectual protection regime for a process innovation. We set up a multi-stage model in which choosing between patent and trade secrecy is affected by three parameters : the patent strength defined as the probability that the right is upheld by the...

This article proposes an analysis of the science-technology interactions. The first part is historical and focuses on the transformations that resulted from the passage of a prescriptive knowledge (techniques) to a scientifically based knowledge (technology). The contemporaneous relations...

La teoría económica, al considerar que las patentes son instrumentos de política pública para fomentar la innovación y la difusión de la tecnología, conduce principalmente a tres conclusiones. En primer lugar, las patentes no tienen por qué ser siempre el medio de protección más eficaz...

In this paper we examine the implications of uncertainty over patent validity on patentholders' licensing strategies. Two licensing mechanisms are examined: per-unit royalty and up-front fee.We provide conditions under which uncertain patents are licensed in order to avoid patent litigation. It...

In this paper, we revisit the issue of licensing ‘weak' patents under the shadow of litigation. Departing from the seminal paper by Farrell and Shapiro [2008], we consider innovations of any size and not only ‘small' innovations, and we allow the number of licensees to be less than the...

Cet article propose une réflexion générale sur le système des brevets. Trois questions sont d'abord examinées : 1. Le brevet favorise-t-il l'innovation ? 2. La propriété intellectuelle est-elle comparable aux autres formes de propriété ? 3. La protection par le brevet est-elle...

The paper investigates the choice of a licensing mechanism by the holder of a patent whose validity may be challenged. Focusing fi…rst on weak patents, i.e. patents that have a high probability of being invalidated by a court if challenged, we show that the patent holder fi…nds it optimal to...

Book's Review:Louis Kaplow, Competition Policy and Price Fixing, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2013

The contemporary tensions between patents and competition no longer reside in the traditional trade-off between the exclusionary right given to an inventor to encourage innovation, and the welfare loss induced by the market power associated to this right. They rather result from three important...