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on Intellectual Property Rights |
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Issue of 2017‒09‒17
five papers chosen by Giovanni Ramello Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo Avogadro” |
| By: | Tatsuro Iwaisako (Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how strengthening patent protection affects welfare in a nonscale qualityladder model, which was developed by Segerstrom (1998) and generalized by Li (2003). In the Segerstrom-Li model, patent protection creates no distortion in static allocation among the production sectors. In order to examine the welfare effects of strengthening patent protection adequately, we incorporate a competitive outside good into the Segerstrom-Li model. In the general model, we derive the welfare-maximizing degree of patent protection analytically by utilizing a linear approximation of the transition path. The result shows that the welfare-maximizing degree of patent protection is weaker when the market share of the competitive outside good is psitive than when it is zero. In other words, evaluating the welfare effect of patent protection without considering the static distortion which it creates leads to excessive patent protection. |
| Keywords: | R&D; patent protection; welfare analysis; semi-endogenous growth |
| JEL: | O33 O34 O40 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osk:wpaper:1727&r=ipr |
| By: | Bharat Diwakar; Gilad Sorek; Michael Stern |
| Abstract: | We study the implications of patents in an overlapping-generations model with horizontal innovation of differentiated physical capital. We show that within this demographic structure of finitely lived agents, weakening patent protection generates two contradicting effects on innovation and growth. Weakening patent protection lowers the (average) price of patented machines, thereby increasing machine utilization, output, aggregate saving, and investment. However, a higher demand for machines shifts investment away from the R&D activity aimed at inventing new machine varieties, toward the formation of physical capital. The growth maximizing level of patent protection is incomplete and we show that shortening patent length is more effective than loosening patent breadth in spurring growth. Shorter patent length has an additional positive effect on growth by decreasing investment in old patents. Finally, we show that the welfare implications of shortening patent breadth depend on consumer time preference and the degree of machine specialization. |
| Keywords: | IPR, Patents, Physical Capital, Growth, OLG |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:abn:wpaper:auwp2017-06&r=ipr |
| By: | Branstetter, Lee; Gandal, Neil; Kunievsky, Nadav |
| Abstract: | A large and growing literature has used patent and patent citation data to measure knowledge spillovers across inventions and organizations, but relatively few papers in this literature have explicitly considered the collaboration networks formed by inventors as a mechanism for shaping and transmitting these knowledge flows. This paper utilizes an approach developed by Fershtman and Gandal (FG 2011) (and applied to Open Source Software) to examine the incidence and nature of knowledge flows mediated by the collaboration networks of inventors active in the information security industry. This is an industry in which a number of nations outside the United States, including Israel, have emerged as important centers of innovation. Israeli prominence in this sector is often attributed, in part, to a dense network of personal collections and collaborations that has its genesis in elite intelligence units in the Israeli Defense Forces, through which many Israeli information security inventors and entrepreneurs receive their first exposure to this domain. Using data from U.S. PTO patent grants in information security, we find that the quality of Israeli information security inventions is systematically linked to the structure of the collaborative network generated by Israeli inventors in this sector. Using the FG (2011) model, this suggests that there are knowledge spillovers from the network. In some other nations, invention quality is less closely linked to the collaboration networks of inventors. This research highlights the importance of direct interaction among inventors as a conduit for flows of frontier scientific knowledge. |
| Keywords: | Information Security; Knowledge Spillovers; patents |
| JEL: | O31 O33 O57 |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12268&r=ipr |
| By: | Jenny X. Lin; William Lincoln |
| Abstract: | Do countries that improve their protection of intellectual property rights gain access to new product varieties from technologically advanced countries? We build the first comprehensive matched firm level data set on exports and patents using confidential microdata from the US Census to address this question. Across several different estimation approaches we find evidence that these protections affect where US firms export. |
| Keywords: | trade, innovation, intellectual property rights, patents |
| JEL: | F13 F14 M21 O31 O3 |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:17-51&r=ipr |
| By: | Wolfgang Kerber (University of Marburg) |
| Abstract: | In its Communication "Building a European data economy" the EU Commission discusses the introduction of a new exclusive property right on data ("data producer right") for non-personal (or anonymised) machine-generated data, and mandatory access rights to privately held data for achieving more access, transfer and reuse of data, esp. in the context of "Internet of Things" applications. This article analyzes the problem of "rights on data" from an economic perspective (incentive problem, data markets, bargaining power problems, access problems in multi-stakeholder situations) and the reasonings and proposals in the Communication from an economic perspective. Important results are that a "data producer right" cannot be recom-mended but that access rights to data can be part of specifically tailored data governance solu-tions in certain sectors. |
| Keywords: | Big Data, machine-generated data, data ownership, data access, data markets, internet of things |
| JEL: | L86 O34 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mar:magkse:201735&r=ipr |