FEE VERSUS ROYALTY POLICY IN LICENSING THROUGH BARGAINING: AN APPLICATION OF THE NASH BARGAINING SOLUTION

In this paper, we consider a Cournot duopoly market in which the patent‐holding firm negotiates with its rival firm about payments for licensing a cost‐reducing innovation. Applying the Nash bargaining solution, we compare two licensing policies, a fixed fee and a royalty. Our results are as follows. Royalty licensing is better than fixed fee licensing for both firms if the innovation is not drastic. So, royalty licensing is always carried out. Moreover, though there exists a case in which consumers prefer fixed fee licensing, royalty licensing is always superior to fixed fee licensing from the social point of view.     

Licensing versus assignment: Innovation transfer in an asymmetric duopoly

Suppose that the relatively inefficient firm in an asymmetric duopoly market develops a nondrastic process innovation. To maximize returns on the innovation, the innovator must determine the most lucrative commercial policy. Should it be in‐house exploitation, or licensing or assignment? It turns out that the innovator never uses innovation exclusively. The choice of licensing or assignment depends on the size of the initial cost difference. When the initial cost difference is relatively small, the innovator would resort to licensing, whereas when there is a significant initial cost gap, the innovator would rather assign the property rights of the innovation to the rival. In the case of assignment, the assignee may license the innovation back to the assignor. With the option of reverse licensing, an assignment will always be more profitable than (direct) licensing. Interestingly, if the initial cost gap were sufficiently large, the innovator would exit the market postassignment, and thus act as an outside nonoperating licensor.     

‘To sell or not to sell’: Licensing versus selling by an outside innovator

We study various modes of technology transfer of an outside innovator in a spatial framework when the potential licensees are asymmetric. In addition to different licensing options, we also look into the option of selling the property rights of innovation and find the optimal mode of technology transfer. For licensing we find the optimal policy is to offer pure royalty contracts to both licensee firms when cost differentials between the firms are relatively small compared to the transportation cost, otherwise offer a fixed fee licensing contract to the efficient firm only. Interestingly, we show the innovator is always better-off selling the innovation to any one of the firms who further licenses it to the rival firm. The result holds irrespective of the size of the innovation (drastic or non-drastic) and the degree of cost asymmetry between the licensees. Social welfare is greater under selling than licensing.     

Licensing under convex costs

We show that both the outside and inside innovators license a new product (or drastic process innovation) to all potential licensees in the presence of convex costs, which occur under decreasing returns to scale technologies. An implication of our analysis is that a monopolist producer may prefer technology licensing in a homogeneous goods industry. We also show that an inside innovator’s incentive for innovation may be higher than that of an outside innovator.     

A Dynamic Analysis of Licensing: The ‘‘Boomerang'’ Effect and Grant‐Back Clauses*

This article develops an incomplete contract model of the licensing relationship to analyze the dynamic effects of licensing on R&D competition in the innovation market and to examine the rationale for often observed ‘‘grant‐back'’ clauses. Of particular concern are how the consideration of future competition distorts the licensing relationship and how the grant‐back clause can mitigate this distortion. I also evaluate the validity of the casual antitrust argument that grant‐back clauses may adversely affect competition because they reduce the licensee's incentive to engage in R&D and thereby limit rivalry in innovation markets.     

Unionized labor market and licensing by a monopolist

We show that a monopolistic final goods producer may find it profitable to create competition by licensing its technology if the input market is imperfectly competitive. With a centralized union, we show that licensing by a monopolist is profitable under both uniform and discriminatory wage settings by the union. However, the incentive for licensing is higher under the former situation. We also show that licensing by the monopolist is profitable under both quantity and price competition, and the incentive for licensing is higher under price competition than under quantity competition. Our qualitative results hold even with decentralized unions.      

COST‐SAVING PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES AND STRATEGIC DELEGATION*

This work analyses a managerial delegation model in which firms choose between two production technologies: a low marginal cost technology and a high marginal cost technology. For the former to be adopted more investment is needed than for the later. By giving managers of firms an incentive scheme based on a linear combination of profit and sales revenue, we find that Bertrand competition provides a stronger incentive to adopt the cost‐saving technology than the strict profit maximisation case. However, the results may be reversed under Cournot competition. If the degree of product substitutability is sufficiently low (high), the incentive to adopt the cost‐saving technology is larger under strict profit maximisation (strategic delegation).     

Does technology licensing matter for privatization?

In mixed oligopolies, technology licensing from a cost‐efficient firm to a cost‐inefficient firm has been widely observed. This paper examines the relationship between privatization and licensing (by public or private firms) with the consideration of either a domestic or a foreign private firm. We find that (a) in the case of a domestic private firm, public licensing facilitates privatization, but private licensing hinders privatization; (b) in the case of a foreign private firm, both public and private licensing facilitate privatization. Our results yield important policy implications on privatization.     

International Technology Transfer and Welfare

We investigate the welfare effect of international technology transfer in a quality model. A foreign innovator with a new quality product can license its innovation to the domestic firm(s) via a fixed fee. Findings show that the foreign innovator will license exclusively to the high‐quality firm under Bertrand competition, whereas it may exclusively license to the high‐quality firm, the low‐quality firm, or non‐exclusively to both firms under Cournot competition. Non‐exclusive licensing is necessarily welfare‐enhancing whereas exclusive licensing is welfare‐reducing if the quality of the new technology is not sufficiently superior to that of the domestic ones.     

Trade Policy in the Presence of Technology Licensing*

We consider strategic trade policy when a high‐cost and a low‐cost firm belonging to two different countries compete in quantities in a third country, and technology is transferable via licensing. We characterize the effects of subsidies on (i) licensing payments—a new source of rents, (ii) the decision to license, and (iii) the subsidy bill difference (compared to when licensing is infeasible). We find that, in the presence of licensing, optimal strategic trade policy has several interesting features. For example, even under Cournot competition, optimal policy can be an export tax instead of an export subsidy. Also, unlike results in strategic trade policy with asymmetric costs, we find that optimal export subsidies are not necessarily positively related to the cost‐competitiveness of firms. In other words, governments need not necessarily favor “winners” when licensing is possible. Furthermore, there exist parameterizations such that a government, if it can, might ban licensing.     

COMPETITION, PARALLEL IMPORTS AND COST-REDUCING INNOVATION

Incorporating parallel imports (PI), we develop a two‐country two‐firm model which relates to the incentives for cost‐reducing innovation. We show that PI may facilitate or inhibit the manufacturers' incentives to innovate. In particular, PI could encourage both firms' innovations. The difference between the manufacturer's profits under successful innovation and failed innovation is either a U‐shaped curve or an inverted U‐shaped curve in terms of the cost of engaging in PI. As these differences reflect the manufacturers' incentive to innovate, the variations in R&D investment depend on transportation cost, and firms' marginal costs before and after successful innovations.     

Technology Transfer,Quality Standards,and North–South Trade

This paper examines the economic consequences of technology transfer through licensing in a North–South model of vertical product differentiation, based on a product‐line pricing framework. With its limited technological expertise, the southern firm cannot export to the northern market without purchasing the northern firm's “clean” and low‐cost technology. With North–South cost‐asymmetry, we conclude that the transfer of technology through licensing promotes trade, product variety and improves global welfare. However, without government intervention, the private levels of product quality chosen by firms tend to be lower than the socially optimal levels. This finding helps to explain why developed countries often set quality standards for imported foreign products.     

Separation of Regulatory Powers When Contracts Are Incomplete

The investment of a regulated firm affects the service/good provided on many dimensions. Should an integrated regulator take care of them all? Or is it better to have separate regulators responsible for them? We analyze the effect of the separation of regulatory powers on the regulated firm's ex ante incentive to invest in a “cooperative” innovation. The effects of the innovation are not verifiable and the cost of investing is sunk, hence, there is a problem of hold‐up. We find that when the innovation produces opposite effects the ex ante firm's incentive to invest is larger in the case of separation than in the case of integrated regulation. We also stress the risk of over‐investment that the separation of regulatory powers may induce. We maintain that along with classical incentive regulation—which mainly provides incentives for the firm to be efficient—the separation of regulatory powers may play a role in providing an incentive for cooperative innovations.     

Possibility of relicensing and patent protection

We examine the effects of patent protection, paying attention to its role of prohibiting relicensing. We focus on two questions. First, whether does the innovator have an incentive of licensing the concealable (easily kept secret, if not licensed) innovation in the case where patent protection is absent? Second, what effects does patent protection have upon the innovator's payoff and the consumers' welfare? Principal findings include the following: In the case of nondrastic innovations in the sense of Arrow, the innovator has an incentive of licensing even without patent protection. Patent protection generally benefits the innovator, but may cause damage to the consumers for large innovations. For drastic innovations, patent protection has no influence on licensing: Licensing never takes place regardless of whether it is provided or not.     

创新技术价值信息不对称下厂商的许可策略

本文构建了创新技术商业价值信息不对称情况下在位创新厂商和生产厂商间的技术许可博弈模型,并运用逆向归纳法分别寻求混同均衡和分离均衡。分析结果表明,若运用两部制许可方式,从创新厂商的角度出发,当创新技术高经济价值的可能性较大时,高提成费用混同许可最优;当创新技术低经济价值的可能性较大时,低提成费用混同许可最优。此外,本文还得出固定费用许可条件下的最优许可策略。无论厂商选择何种许可方式,均不存在分离均衡。     

上游垄断背景下厂商提成特许策略研究

在原料供应厂商占据垄断地位的假设下,通过对比下游创新厂商提成特许前后的收益,对下游创新厂商的特许策略选择和创新激励进行了研究。研究结果表明:当技术创新规模较小时,下游创新厂商进行技术创新的激励增大,会对下游其他无创新的厂商进行技术特许;当技术创新规模较大时,下游创新厂商则不会进行技术特许。     

On Patent Licensing in Spatial Competition

We consider the optimal licensing strategy of an outsider patentee as well as an insider patentee in a linear city framework where firms compete in price. We show that offering royalty is best for an outsider patentee for both drastic and non-drastic innovations. For an insider patentee, offering no license is the best when the innovation is drastic, while royalty is optimal when the innovation is non-drastic. The incentive for innovation is higher for an outsider patentee compared to an insider patentee. The overall increase in welfare due to an innovation is the same for both outsider and insider patentees.     

“一带一路”战略下中部六省专利实施许可网络研究

“一带一路”战略为中部地区科技创新成果转化提供了新机遇。为制定和优化中部地区跨域技术扩散政策,运用社会网络分析方法,以2015年度国家知识产权局专利实施许可备案数据为样本,分析了专利许可整体网络、跨区域专利许可网络、四大国家级自主创新示范区节点城市专利许可网络结构特征和技术类型。研究发现存在如下问题：中部六省在整体网络中处于次边缘层向次中心层过渡位置、地域结构与“一带一路”战略目标不匹配、自主创新示范区节点城市的技术扩散引领辐射作用不足。据此,提出了构建中部六省技术帮扶联盟增强科技扶贫力度、发挥区位优势搭建跨域技术扩散中介桥梁、优化示范区技术扩散评估和激励政策以及发挥技术比较优势等建议。     

塞尔维亚科技创新与技术转移激励政策评析

塞尔维亚是中东欧近几年来科技创新发展速度较快、技术转移成果较多的国家之一,其科技创新和技术转移相关的激励政策也随着科技水平的发展而不断完善和健全。塞尔维亚科技创新和技术转移激励政策在经费筹措和资助、科研成果商业化等诸多方面可圈可点,但仍存在民众信任度不高、资金分配制度不完善、对国际化创新合作的重视不足等问题。本文从科技创新和技术转移两个方面介绍了塞尔维亚科技创新和技术转移激励政策的现状、进展,并分析了其相关优势和亮点,同时也指出激励政策存在的一些漏洞,并作为对照,提出了对完善我国科技创新和技术转移激励政策的建议。     

专利保护、补充性资产与创新企业技术许可选择

创新企业采用什么方式阻止竞争对手的模仿创新是创新战略的重要部分,分析专利保护和补充性资产对创新企业技术许可的影响,发现专利保护和补充性资产对创新企业选择技术许可,阻止模仿创新有着重要的影响,在此基础上,本文建立库诺特模型分析了市场主导型创新企业的最优技术许可战略.