Patent protection under endogenous product differentiation

Arijit Mukherjee

Asia-Pacific Journal of Accounting & Economics, 2014, vol. 21, issue 1, 78-93

Abstract: It is generally believed that, if weak patent protection does not affect innovation, it makes consumers and society better off compared to strong patent protection by increasing the intensity of competition. We show that this conclusion may not be valid if the innovator can take other non-production strategies, such as product differentiation, which helps to reduce the intensity of competition. Weak patent protection may reduce consumer surplus and social welfare by inducing product differentiation. We show that the type of product-market competition and the market demand function play important roles in this respect. Hence, there can be an argument for strong patent protection even if it does not affect innovation.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/16081625.2014.858389 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Patent protection under endogenous product differentiation (2013)
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:taf:raaexx:v:21:y:2014:i:1:p:78-93

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/raae20

DOI: 10.1080/16081625.2014.858389

Access Statistics for this article

Asia-Pacific Journal of Accounting & Economics is currently edited by Yin-Wong Cheung, Hong Hwang, Jeong-Bon Kim, Shu-Hsing Li and Suresh Radhakrishnan

More articles in Asia-Pacific Journal of Accounting & Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().