Fostering the Diffusion of General Purpose Technologies: Evidence from the Licensing of the Transistor Patents

Monika Schnitzer (), Markus Nagler and Martin Watzinger

No 15713, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: How do patents influence the spread of General Purpose Technologies? To answer this question, we analyze the diffusion of the transistor, one of the most important technologies of our time. We show that the transistor diffusion and cross-technology spillovers increased dramatically after AT&T began licensing its transistor patents on standardized terms in 1952. This suggests that standardized licensing of the transistor patents helped jumpstart the positive feedback loop between innovations upstream and in applications. A subsequent reduction in royalties did not lead to a further increase, suggesting that standardized licensing in itself is more important than the specific royalty rates.

Keywords: Innovation; Intellectual property; Standardized licensing; General purpose technololgies; Transistor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 O33 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-ino and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15713 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Fostering the Diffusion of General Purpose Technologies: Evidence from the Licensing of the Transistor Patents (2022)
Working Paper: Fostering the Diffusion of General Purpose Technologies: Evidence from the Licensing of the Transistor Patents (2021)
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:cpr:ceprdp:15713

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15713

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().