Reinforcing the patent system? Patent fencing, knowledge diffusion and welfare

Murat Yildizoglu ()

Cahiers du GRES from Groupement de Recherches Economiques et Sociales

Abstract: This article develops an evolutionary model of industry dynamics in order to carry out a richer theoretical analysis of the consequences of a stronger patent system. This model explicitly takes into account the potentially positive effects of the patents: Publication of patents participates to the building of a collective knowledge stock on which the innovations can rely, and dropped patents can provide a source of technological progress for firms that are lagging behind the leaders of the industry. These dimensions of the patent system are used to question the negative results of Vallée & Yildizoglu (2006). The main results of the new model show that these positive effects do not counterbalance the negative effects of a stronger patent system on social welfare and global technological progress, even if it is a source of better protection and higher profits for the firms.

Keywords: Innovation; Technical progress; Patent system; Intellectual property rights (IPR); Technology policy; Technological regimes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 O34 L52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-knm, nep-reg and nep-tid
Date: 2006
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://cahiersdugres.u-bordeaux4.fr/2006/2006-23.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:grs:wpegrs:2006-23

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cahiers du GRES from Groupement de Recherches Economiques et Sociales
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Vincent Frigant ().