Inventions under siege? The impact of technology competition on licensing

Christoph Grimpe and Katrin Hussinger

No 09-039, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: In recent years, firms have increasingly contributed to and been confronted with a patent landscape characterized by numerous but marginal inventions, overlapping claims and patent fences. Literature suggests that both the fragmentation of ownership and the threat of a firm's patent applications being blocked by competitors' patents lead to increased patenting and inlicensing activity. In this paper, we investigate the effect of expected blocking on firms' engagement in in- and out-licensing. Based on a sample of more than 400 German manufacturing firms our results show that firms engage in in- and out-licensing if technology competition increases which is in line with the argument that licensing can mitigate hold-up problems in technology markets.

Keywords: Licensing; blocking patents; discrete and complex technologies; technology competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L24 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:09039

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