Hybrid Licensing of Product Innovations

Elisabetta Ottoz and Cugno Franco
Additional contact information
Cugno Franco: Università di Torino

Review of Law & Economics, 2009, vol. 5, issue 1, 579-594

Abstract: This paper shows that when a product innovation is protected by both patents and trade secrets, under U.S. law the innovator can be induced to license a rival even if patent protection is very broad and there are no partially competitive older products. This opportunity may benefit society. Nevertheless, some legal restrictions in force at the moment do not permit society to reap all potential gains. Since incentive and efficiency considerations suggest that a socially optimal contract should provide for both a negative fixed fee and post-patent royalties at the same unit level as before a patent's expiration, we conclude that per se prohibitions of these practices are unjustified.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1555-5879.1380 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
Working Paper: Hybrid Licensing of Product Innovations (2008)
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:bpj:rlecon:v:5:y:2009:i:1:n:24

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/rle/html

DOI: 10.2202/1555-5879.1380

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Law & Economics is currently edited by Francesco Parisi

More articles in Review of Law & Economics from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().