Patent Thickets: Strategic Patenting of Complex Technologies

James Bessen

Working Papers from Research on Innovation

Abstract: Patent race models assume that an innovator wins the only patent covering a product. But when technologies are complex, this property right is defective: ownership of a product’s technology is shared, not exclusive. In that case I show that if patent standards are low, firms build “thickets” of patents, especially incumbent firms in mature industries. When they assert these patents, innovators are forced to share rents under cross-licenses, making R&D incentives sub-optimal. On the other hand, when lead time advantages are significant and patent standards are high, firms pursue strategies of “mutual non-aggression.” Then R&D incentives are stronger, even optimal.

Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.researchoninnovation.org/thicket.pdf

Related works:
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:roi:wpaper:0401

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Research on Innovation
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jim Bessen ().