Innovation Fertility and Patent Design

Hugo Hopenhayn and Matthew Mitchell

Working Papers from Minnesota - Center for Economic Research

Abstract: It may be advantageous to provide a variety of kinds of patent protection to heterogenous innovations. Innovations which benefit society largely through their use as building blocks to future inventions may require a different scope of protection in order to be encouraged, sine expected profits are often decresing in a products usefulness to others when the others are competitors. We model the problem of designing an optimal patent menu when the fertility of an innovation in generating more innovations cannot be observed when the patent is granted and characterize the optimal menu when breadth is a choice variable of the patent authority.

Keywords: PATENTS; INNOVATIONS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O30 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 1999
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Working Paper: Innovation Fertility and Patent Design (1999)
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