How Broad Should the Scope of Patent Protection Be?

Paul Klemperer

No 392, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We explore the trade-off between a patent's length (its lifetime) and its width (its scope of coverage). A wider patent generally reduces the distortion of consumers' choices between the patented brand of the product and unpatented, lower-priced varieties sold by competitors, it also permits higher prices, and so increases (relative to profits) the deadweight losses from consumers switching consumption out of the product class. We establish conditions under which infinitely-lived but very narrowly-focused patents are the socially efficient way to reward innovation, and also show when very short-lived but very broad patents are optimal.

Keywords: Patents; Research And Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1990-03
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (322)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=392 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How Broad Should the Scope of Patent Protection Be? (1990)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:392

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/ ... pers/dp.php?dpno=392

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().