Patent Thicket, Secrecy, and Licensing

Illoong Kwon ()

Korean Economic Review, 2012, vol. 28, 27-49

Abstract: This paper considers a patent portfolio race where firms compete for complementary patents, called a patent thicket. When firms have an option to keep their innovation secret, this paper shows that there exists an equilibrium where firms’ patent propensity is strictly between zero and one. In such an equilibrium, stronger patent protection reduces the firms’ investment in innovation. Moreover, this result does not change even when a licensing contract is feasible.

Keywords: Patent Thicket; Secrecy; Licensing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L13 O30 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://keapaper.kea.ne.kr/RePEc/kea/keappr/KER-20120630-28-1-02.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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kea:keappr:ker-20120630-28-1-02

Access Statistics for this article

Korean Economic Review is currently edited by Kyung Hwan Baik

More articles in Korean Economic Review from Korean Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by KEA ().