Do Shorter Product Cycles Induce Patent Thickets?

Patrick Frank Ernst Beschorner

No 08-098, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: The traditional argument that shorter product cycles favor trade secret over patenting is reviewed. A game theoretic model provides an argument that shorter product cycles can induce firms to file more patent applications. The firms may be trapped in a prisoners' dilemma where all firms would jointly prefer to patent less and to not have a patent thicket. If firms start applying for patents on technologies which are not yet mature in order to cover ideas that may eventually turn successful, this may create a patent thicket. The transition into a situation where firms start patenting many ideas instead of single mature technologies is initiated and accelerated when network effects are present or patents exhibit a blocking property.

Keywords: patent thicket; product cycles; licensing; network effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K2 L1 L2 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-law
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:7472

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