We challenge the common wisdom that patent protection (compared to no or weak patent protection) makes the consumers worse off by reducing product-market competition unless it increases innovation significantly. We show that the absence of patent protection may encourage horizontal merger and...

We show that the common wisdom suggesting higher investment in innovation under a stronger patent protection may not be true if the innovator can license its technology ex‐post innovation. If the initial cost of production is high and the slope of the marginal cost of undertaking innovation is...

This paper investigates the effect of different patent regimes on R&D investment and social welfare in a duopoly market with uncertain R&D process. We find that strong patent protection increases R&D investment of at least one firm but whether both firms' R&D investment will be more under strong...

We show the effects of product differentiation and product market competition on technology licensing by an outside innovator. For a certain range of product differentiation, both the innovator and the society prefer royalty licensing compared to auction (or fixed-fee), irrespective of Cournot...

It is generally believed that a weak patent protection makes the consumers and the society better off compared to a strong patent protection by increasing the intensity of competition if the weak patent protection does not affect innovation. We show that this conclusion may not hold if the...