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Kwon on Parent Portfolio Races

By Lawrence Solum

Illoong Kwon (University at Albany, SUNY) has posted Patent Portfolio Races and Secrecy on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

As new products depend on increasingly complex and complementary technologies, there exist growing concerns that stronger patent protection may hold up other complementary innovations. Despite the hold-up problem, this paper shows that if efficient licensing contracts are feasible and if the patent propensity is one, stronger patent protection always encourages innovation. However, empirical research shows that the average patent propensity is much less than one, as firms often choose secrecy over patenting. In such a case, this paper shows that stronger patent protection can discourage innovation even with efficient licensing contracts.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on February 04, 2010 (boomark / email).