The Social Welfare Implications of Intellectual Property Protection: Imitation and Going Off Patent

James F. Oehmke
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James F. Oehmke: Michigan Stale University

Chapter Chapter 20 in Regulating Agricultural Biotechnology: Economics and Policy, 2006, pp 437-455 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Successful biotechnology innovations have captured significant market shares and are thought to lead to non-competitive input markets. These market structures are determined not just by the current innovation, but also by the history of prior innovation and the potential for future innovation or imitation. This paper examines the relationships among future innovation or imitation, current market structure, and the social welfare. Model results suggest that the social welfare effects of going off patent can be larger than those generated by the discovery itself, especially when a private-sector firm extracts a majority of the generated social surplus in the form of rents.

Keywords: agricultural biotechnology; intellectual property; patent; social welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nrmchp:978-0-387-36953-2_20

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DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-36953-2_20

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