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Patent. |
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Origins in medieval and early modern royal
grants. |
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Letters patent vs. letters close. |
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Copyright. |
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Protects artistic expression. |
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Trademark. |
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Encourages investment in reputational capital. |
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Firm expends resources on R&D to create a new product. |
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Expenditures are a sunk cost equal (in flow
terms) to IJKL. |
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Successful innovation
creates a new demand curve. |
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Issues: |
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Other mechanisms for appropriating the returns
to innovation. |
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Is research seeking the same idea or many
diverse ideas? |
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Differences in technology and in the process of
technical advance. |
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Tacit knowledge. |
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Trade secrets. |
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First-mover advantages. |
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Complementary assets. |
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Patent races and overfishing models. |
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Generating “too much” research effort. |
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But how frequent are patent races? |
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Science-based industries. |
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Cumulative systems industries. |
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Science-based industries. |
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Discovery of a single explicit “idea.” |
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Knowledge is “slippery.” |
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Invention-motivation theory works reasonably
well. |
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Example: pharmaceutical patents and the price of
drugs. |
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Cumulative systems industries. |
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Technical advance depends on small improvements
in an interconnected system. |
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Knowledge is tacit. |
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Examples: automobiles, radio, airframes. |
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Patent scope. |
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General ideas vs. specific processes. |
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Example: the Selden patent. |
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Blocking patents. |
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The “anticommons.” |
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Patent pools. |
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Notes