During the last few decades, the number of patents in information and communication technologies has increased considerably. An increasing number of patents and the associated fragmentation of IP rights have generated a series of potentially problematic consequences. Patent thickets, royalty...

This paper focuses on a specific strategy that developers of mobile applications may use to stimulate demand: the release of updates. We start with a stylised theoretical analysis to describe the developer's decision to release an update. Its predictions are then tested by using an unbalanced...

We analyze the consequences of illegally residing in a country on the likelihood of reporting a crime to the police and, as a consequence, on the likelihood to become victims of a crime. We use an immigration amnesty to address two issues when dealing with the legal status of immigrants: it is...

users to satisfy their specific needs; the more a software evolves towards a stable release able to address the requirements of its developers, the more successful the project. In this paper we use a large data-set obtained from SourceForge.net to estimate the impact of observed project...

The aim of this study is to provide a structured review of the role of IPR in fostering innovation and economic growth in the European ICT sector. Typically IPR analysis of industries focuses on patents. In practice, however, IPR strategies are developed combining the use of different IP rights....