Patent Height and Competition in Product Improvements

Theon van Dijk

Journal of Industrial Economics, 1996, vol. 44, issue 2, 151-67

Abstract: The stringency of novelty requirements that patent offices use in judging patentability defines the height of patent protection. The author studies patent height in a duopoly where firms compete in product improvements. A competitor who wants to invent around the other's patent is restricted by a minimum improvement level. The author shows that low patent protection does not affect market equilibrium without patent protection. A patent holder can lose with medium patent heights but not if patents provide high protection. The non patent holder can gain with medium heights but is increasingly worse off with higher patent protection. Copyright 1996 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-1821%2819960 ... 0.CO%3B2-D&origin=bc full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jindec:v:44:y:1996:i:2:p:151-67

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0022-1821

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Industrial Economics is currently edited by Pierre Regibeau, Yeon-Koo Che, Kenneth Corts, Thomas Hubbard, Patrick Legros and Frank Verboven

More articles in Journal of Industrial Economics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().