Profit Neutrality in Licensing: The Boundary Between Antitrust Law and Patent Law

Stephen M. Maurer and Suzanne Scotchmer

American Law and Economics Review, 2006, vol. 8, issue 3, 476-522

Abstract: We address the patent/antitrust conflict in licensing and develop three guiding principles for deciding acceptable terms of license. Profit neutrality holds that patent rewards should not depend on the rightholder's ability to work the patent himself. Derived reward holds that the patentholder's profits should be earned, if at all, from the social value created by the invention. Minimalism holds that licenses should not be more restrictive than necessary to achieve neutrality. We argue that these principles are economically sound and rationalize some key decisions of the twentieth century such as General Electric and Line Material. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aler/ahl013 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Profit Neutrality in Licensing: The Boundary Between Antitrust Law and Patent Law (2004)
Working Paper: Profit Neutrality in Licensing: The Boundary between Antitrust Law and Patent Law (2004)
Working Paper: Profit Neutrality in Licensing: The Boundary Between Antitrust Law and Patent Law (2004)
Working Paper: Profit Neutrality in Licensing: The Boundary Between Antitrust Law and Patent Law
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:oup:amlawe:v:8:y:2006:i:3:p:476-522

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

American Law and Economics Review is currently edited by J.J. Prescott and Albert Choi

More articles in American Law and Economics Review from American Law and Economics Association Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().