Profit Neutrality in Licensing: The Boundary Between Antitrust Law and Patent Law

Stephen M. Maurer and Suzanne Scotchmer
Additional contact information
Stephen M. Maurer: Maurer Graduate School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley

Law and Economics from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: From the antitrust case law that governs restrictions on patent licenses, we derive three unifying principles: just reward, profit neutrality and minimalism. The just-reward principle holds that the patentholder's profits should be earned, if at all, from the social value created by his invention. Profit neutrality holds that patent rewards should not depend on the rightholder's ability to work the patent himself. Minimalism holds that licensing contracts should not use more restrictive terms than required for neutrality. We discuss how these principles determine which patent license restrictions should and should not be acceptable from an antitrust perspective. We also compare these principles and the per se rules that follow from them to the potential benefits and drawbacks likely to be encountered under a rule of reason approach.

JEL-codes: K21 L12 L41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2004-07-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
Note: 43 pages, Acrobat .pdf
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/le/papers/0407/0407001.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Profit Neutrality in Licensing: The Boundary Between Antitrust Law and Patent Law (2006)
Working Paper: Profit Neutrality in Licensing: The Boundary Between Antitrust Law and Patent Law (2004)
Working Paper: Profit Neutrality in Licensing: The Boundary between Antitrust Law and Patent Law (2004)
Working Paper: Profit Neutrality in Licensing: The Boundary Between Antitrust Law and Patent Law
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:wpa:wuwple:0407001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Law and Economics from University Library of Munich, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by EconWPA ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).