The Relationship Between Intellectual Property Law and Competition Law: An Economic Approach

This paper presents an economic analysis of the relationship between Intellectual Property (IP) Law and Competition Law. Contrary to some of the recent debate, our analysis emphasises the separation of IP Law and Competition Law: IP law should concern itself with assigning and defending intellectual property rights, while Competition Law should concern itself with the use of those rights. This separation extends to the enforcement of the law as well, where we argue that once property rights have been assigned, no further distinction based on intellectual or non-intellectual property should be made. While the IP/Competition Law interface has some specificity due to the types of behaviours that tend to arise more frequently where IP is concerned, we argue for a set of principles for Competition Policy that include restraint, a commitment not to revisit ex post the rights granted by IP law, and a commitment to make large changes in property right regimes only when very large changes in ex post regulation occur.

International Macroeconomic Policy Coordination When Policy-Makers Disagree on the Model

The existing literature on international macroeconomic policy coordination makes the unrealistic assumption that policy-makers all know the true model, from which it follows in general that the Nash bargaining solution is superior to the Nash non-cooperative solution. But everything changes once we recognize that policy-makers' models differ from each other and therefore from the "true" model. It is still true that the two countries will in general be able to agree on a cooperative policy package that each believes will improve the objective function relative to the Nash non-cooperative solution. However, the bargaining solution is as likely to move the target variables in the wrong direction as in the right direction, in the light of a third true model. This paper illustrates these theoretical points with monetary and fiscal multipliers taken from simulations of eight leading international econometric models. (It is a sequel to NBER Working Paper 1925, which considered coordination between the domestic monetary and fiscal authorities.) Here we first consider coordination between U.S. and non-U.S. central banks. We find that out of 512 possible combinations of models that could represent U.S. beliefs, non-U.S. beliefs and the true model, coordination improves U.S. welfare in only 289 cases, reducing it in 206, and improves the welfare of other OECD countries in only 297 cases, reducing it in 198. Then we consider coordination with both monetary and fiscal policy. We find that out of 512 combinations, coordination improves U.S. welfare in 183 cases, reducing it in 228, and improves the welfare of other OECD countries in 283 cases, reducing it in 219. A final section of the paper considers possible extensions of the framework, dealing with uncertainty.

Property Rights and Invention

We survey the economics literature on optimal patent design. We first outline the patent right and the basic economic effects of the patent on innovation. Models that use frictions instead of patents to generate rewards to innovation and models of trade secrecy are considered briefly. The patent design papers are divided into those that model a single innovation, those dealing with cumulative innovation, and more recent papers focussing on complementary innovations. Disclosure issues are presented in a separate section. Finally, enforcement of patents and the interactions between patents and competition policy are considered.

Administrative Delays as Barriers to Trade

One domestic firm and one foreign firm must decide when to introduce their new product to the home market. The home government may apply an import tariff, an administrative delay, or both to the product of the foreign firm. We show that, while both the tariff and administrative delay can ensure the socially optimal timing of entry, the administrative delay is the less efficient instrument for maximising home welfare. If trade liberalization constrains the import tariff to be below its domestically optimal level, we show that the optimal administrative delay leads to lower levels of world welfare than the optimal tariff, so that trade liberalization can be welfare decreasing

A Note on Internationally Coordinated Policy Packages Intended to be Robust Under Model Uncertainty

Holtham and Hughes Hallett, and a number of other authors, have suggested that a printout of all 1,000 cases of coordination considered in Frankel and Rockett (1988) should be made available. They wish to check whether, if coordination is restricted to policy packages that they call 'strong' bargains, it would raise welfare a higher percentage of the time. We now make those results available. The results show that if coordination is restricted to packages that are robust with respect to model uncertainty, such as the so-called 'strong' bargains, it does indeed improve the odds in favor of gains from coordination.

Mergers and Innovation

Do mergers raise substantial additional issues when the parties have significant innovation programs? To answer this, we examine the merger-related efficiencies that arise only with substantial innovation, arguing that innovation-intensive mergers should be treated more leniently than mergers without this dynamic dimension. We provide guidance on evidence that might determine the magnitude of such efficiencies. Next, we argue that where innovation is “directed” towards a product market, dealing with product line overlap should allay concerns about postmerger innovation. If research is not directed, we argue that theories of harm linked to the product market are unconvincing. Instead, one should look at theories of harms in the innovation market, which stem from the advantage in being first to innovate. Such first-mover advantages can be rooted in patent protection, switching costs, or network effects. This approach helps explain some of the remedies recently imposed on transactions such as Dow-Dupont and Bayer-Monsanto

Economic analysis of resilience: a framework for local policy response based on new case studies

A recent set of case studies on resilience of ecocultures forms the basis for our review of and comment on the resilience literature. We note the diversity of definitions of resilience and the confusion this creates in implementing resilience studies. We develop a synthesis view that establishes a framework for defining resilience in an implementable way. This framework emphasises the importance of defining the source of and magnitude of shocks. Next, we outline measurement issues, including a variety of performance measures. We argue that self-determination and local ownership of resources is supported in the cases, and review the effectiveness of the informal insurance arrangements that are observed. We close with the variables suggested by the case studies to include in a resilience index and lessons for regional goverments developing resilience policy

Patent Thickets Identification

Patent thickets have been identified by various citations-based techniques, such as Graevenitz et al (2011) and Clarkson (2005). An alternative direct measurement is based on expert opinion. We use natural language processing techniques to measure pairwise semantic similarity of patents identified as thicket members by experts to create a semantic network. We compare the semantic similarity scores for patents in different expert-identified thickets: those within the same thicket, those in different thickets, and those not in thickets. We show that patents within the same thicket are significantly more semantically similar than other pairs of patents. We then present a statistical model to assess the probability of a newly added patent belonging to a thicket based on semantic networks as well as other measures from the existing thicket literature (the triples of Graevenitz and Clarkson’s density ratio). We conclude that combining information from semantic distance with other sources can be helpful to isolate the patents that are likely to be members of thickets

Grantbacks, Territorial Restraints, and Innovation

We analyse the effect of grantback clauses in licensing contracts. While competition authorities fear that grantback clauses might decrease the licensee's ex post incentives to innovate, a standard defence is that grantback clauses are required for the patent-owner to agree to license its technology in the first place. We examine the validity of this “but for” defence and the equilibrium effect of grantback clauses on the innovation incentives of the licensee for both non-severable and severable innovations, which roughly correspond to infringing and non-infringing innovations. We show that grantback clauses do not increase the patent-holder's incentives to license when non-severable innovations are at stake but they do when severable innovations are concerned – suggesting that the “but for” defence might be valid for severable innovations but not for non-severable ones, in direct contradiction to regulation in some jurisdictions. Moreover we show that, for severable innovations, grantback clauses can increase the range of parameters for which follow-on innovation by the licensee occurs. Our work extends the large literature on sequential innovation to an environment where information diffuses through licensing rather than through the mere act of patenting. In this different informational set up we show that Green and Scotchmer (1995)’s conclusion that the initial innovator should have a patent of infinite breadth no longer holds