On Licensing Under Bertrand Competition

This paper considers licensing by an innovating firm to its competitor in a differentiated duopoly with Bertrand competition. A principal finding is that royalty licensing may be superior to fee licensing for the innovating firm both when the innovation is drastic and when the innovation is non-drastic.     

‘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.     

License auctions with royalty contracts for (winners and) losers

This paper revisits the licensing of a non-drastic process innovation by an outside innovator to a Cournot oligopoly. We propose a new mechanism that combines a restrictive license auction with royalty licensing. This mechanism is more profitable than standard license auctions, auctioning royalty contracts, fixed-fee licensing, pure royalty licensing, and two-part tariffs. The key features are that royalty contracts are auctioned and that losers of the auction are granted the option to sign a royalty contract. Remarkably, combining royalties for winners and losers of the auction makes the integer constraint concerning the number of licenses irrelevant.     

Optimal patent licensing—Two or three-part tariff

We look into technology transfer by an insider patentee in a spatial duopoly model under three types of licensing contracts—(i) two-part tariff with fixed fee and per-unit royalty, (ii) two-part tariff with fixed fee and ad-valorem royalty and (iii) general three-part tariff with fixed fee, per-unit and ad-valorem royalties. Under two-part tariff contracts, the licenser is better off with the per-unit royalty contract but the general contract does better than the other contracts. In contrast to the existing literature, all three licensing contracts may make the consumers worse-off compared to no licensing, with the lowest consumer surplus achieved under the general licensing contract. Welfare under the general licensing contract is equal to the welfare under two-part tariff with ad-valorem royalty and it is higher than the welfare under no licensing but lower than the welfare under two-part tariff with per-unit royalty. Hence, the general three-part licensing contract is privately optimal but not socially optimal. Similar conclusions hold also under a nonspatial linear demand model with differentiated products.     

Patent Licensing in the Presence of Trade Barriers

We develop a two‐country duopoly model to explore the optimal licensing contract for an outsider licensor in terms of fixed‐fee and royalty licensing by taking into account trade barriers when firms produce a homogeneous product and engage in Bertrand competition in each market. The present paper focuses on the interaction between licensing and trade barriers in two international markets. We show that both royalty and non‐exclusive fixed‐fee licensing can be optimal. Furthermore, exclusive fixed‐fee licensing can be optimal, which is a result that is not discussed in the existing literature.     

Patent licensing in spatial models

We show that a two-part tariff licensing contract is always optimal to the insider patentee in spatial models irrespective of the size of the innovation or any pre-innovation cost asymmetries. The result provides a simple justification of the prevalence of two-part tariff licensing contracts in industries.     

ON TECHNOLOGY LICENSING IN A STACKELBERG DUOPOLY

This paper finds that in a linear Stackelberg duopoly model, the follower is more likely to license a cost-reducing innovation to the leader than the leader is to the follower, regardless of whether licensing is in the form of a fixed fee or royalty per unit of output. Under fixed-fee licensing, the follower gains more from small innovations while the leader gains more from large non-drastic innovations. Under royalty licensing, the follower always gains more than the leader from an innovation.     

Patent licensing under cost asymmetry among firms

This paper extends Poddar and Sinha's (2010) duopolistic model to an oligopolistic model consisting of three cost differential firms engaging in Cournot competition. The focus of the paper is on the impact of the differences in efficiency among the three firms on the choices of the patentee's optimal licensing contract. By confining the number of licenses to one license only, the paper derives a more comprehensive result than that in Poddar and Sinha (2010). In addition, it shows that the insider patentee may choose pure fixed-fee, mixed or pure royalty licensing regardless of licensing to one or two licensees. This paper also proves that the optimal licensing contract can be either exclusive or non-exclusive, depending upon the relative cost advantage between the two licensees.     

Mixed Competition and Patent Licensing

This paper studies the patent licensing decision of an insider patentee when two firms engage in a mixed (Cournot–Bertrand or Bertrand–Cournot) competition where one firm adopts the quantity strategy while the other uses the price strategy and vice versa. If either the fixed fee or royalty is applied, then the licensor prefers the fixed fee when the licensor takes the quantity strategy, while the licensee uses the price strategy (Cournot–Bertrand). If the two‐part tariff is applied, then the two‐part tariff is more likely to be adopted by the licensor under Cournot–Bertrand than under Bertrand–Cournot competition.     

Welfare reducing licensing

In this paper, we characterize situations where licensing a cost reducing innovation to a rival firm using two-part tariff contracts (a fixed fee plus a linear per unit of output royalty) reduces social welfare. We show that it occurs if (i) the firms compete in prices, (ii) the innovation is large enough but not drastic, and (iii) the goods are close enough substitutes. Moreover, we show that, regardless of the type of competition, first, the optimal contract always includes a positive royalty and, second, even drastic innovations are licensed whenever the goods are not homogeneous.     

Commercialization of a demand-enhancing innovation: The release of a new apple variety by a public university

The upsurge of patented fruit varieties developed by university plant-breeding programs motivated this re-examination of optimal commercialization strategies when an innovator cares about profits for both itself and the licensees. Our theoretical findings suggest that the optimal licensing arrangement that maximizes weighted joint profits depends on the innovation level size, number of firms, and the weights assigned to the innovator and licensee profits. We designed an experiment to test the case with a small number of firms and found that the joint profits are the greatest under an exclusive per-unit royalty scheme. However, when the number of firms is large, as may be the case for a varietal introduction into the U.S. apple industry, our model suggests that the joint profits will be the largest under a nonexclusive contract, either with a two-part tariff, if the innovation level is high, or a per-unit royalty if the innovation level is low.     

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.     

考虑革新程度认知差异的新产品技术授权研究

建立博弈模型，探讨技术革新认知差异情形下，外部技术创新者向寡占竞争格局的生产企业授权生产新产品专利的最优决策问题。研究发现，创新授权者关于新产品市场的认知劣势使固定收费契约不具备完全优于特许权收费契约的绝对优势；在双重收费契约下，专利人授权对象选择因认知差异影响，由排他性授权向非排他性授权决策转变；认知差异性削弱了创新企业市场势力，从而提高特许权收费契约优势，而拍卖、股权投资等有助于创新企业克服认知劣势。据此，建议创新企业明晰创新专利长期回报，综合搭配应用多种授权契约；以非排他性授权策略配合特许权收费、双重收费和股权投资等契约模式，实现技术交易产业链激励共容下的利润最大化，促进技术创新传播应用，提高社会福利水平。     

The effect of mergers on the incentive to invest in cost-reducing innovations

Both mergers and innovation are central elements of a firm's competitive strategy. However, model-theoretical analysis of the merger-innovation link is sparse. The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of mergers on innovative activities and product market competition in the context of incremental process innovations. Inefficiencies due to organizational problems of mergers are accounted for. We show that optimal investment strategies depend on the resulting market structure and differ significantly from insider to outsider. In our linear model mergers turn out to increase social surplus.     

Ownership and enterprise performance in the Russian oil industry, 1992–2012

This article examines enterprise performance in Russian oil companies between 1992 and 2012. The analysis is based upon longitudinal trend output data, and distinguishes between four different types of owners – outsider private, insider private, federal state and regional state. In comparison with previous studies which considered just 1999–2004, and identified outsider private companies as the best performers, this article finds that over the longer period 1992–2012 federal state and insider private-owned companies actually performed best. The explanation for this relates to institutions and the business environment.     

Quality differentiation and product innovation licensing

Evidence reveals that there are more than 50% product innovation licensings applied within industries. We study product innovation licensing (quality-enhancing licensing) in both exclusive and non-exclusive schemes each under unit/revenue royalty and fixed fee in a vertically differentiated Cournot oligopoly, where a quality-leading firm is an internal licensor. We show that, under a non-exclusive licensing, royalty licensing is the superior policy for the licensor if quality difference within firms is small, regardless of whether a unit or revenue royalty scheme is offered. Under an exclusive licensing, a two-part tariff is optimal. If fixed fee licensing is practicable, the licensor favors an exclusive licensing. Furthermore, an increase in quality difference within firms increases the optimal rates. Using the simulated results, we examine that licensing improves social welfare in all schemes, and the number of licensees will influence the magnitude of welfare enhancement.     

Equivalence between fixed fee and ad valorem profit royalty

For an outside innovator with a finite number of buyers of the innovation, this paper compares two licensing schemes: (i) fixed fee, in which a licensee pays a fee to the innovator and (ii) ad valorem profit royalty, in which a licensee leaves a fraction of its profit with the innovator. We show these two schemes are equivalent in that for any number of licenses the innovator puts for sale, these two schemes give the same licensing revenue. We obtain this equivalence result in a general model with minimal structure. It is then applied in a Cournot oligopoly for an outside innovator. Finally, in a Cournot duopoly it is shown that when the innovator is one of the incumbent firms rather than an outsider, the equivalence result does not hold.     

Licensing to a durable-good duopoly in patent litigation

Incorporating patent litigation into a durable-good duopoly model, we revisit the optimal licensing contract on a cost-reducing innovation. We find that both the optimal licensing contract and the innovator's licensing revenue are closely related to the patent's strength, i.e., the probability it would be found valid if tested in court. It is shown that, for a relatively weak patent (patent's strength is low), it's optimal for the innovator to charge the royalty rate as high as possible coupled with a negative fixed fee. But for a relatively strong patent (patent's strength is high), contract involving the combination of a medium level royalty rate and a positive fixed fee is optimal. We also discuss how the patent's strength affects the social welfare of a patent. Finally we present two policy suggestions that may alleviate the social welfare loss raised by the licensing of weak patents.     

Horizontal mergers,cost savings,and network effects

We consider a horizontally differentiated oligopoly and investigate the relationship between merger cost savings and network effects for the incentives of firms to merge and for the postmerger welfare outcomes. We show that it is more profitable to be an insider rather than an outsider of the merger, unless both cost savings and network effects are too low. Mergers can improve customer and total welfare provided both cost savings and network effects are high enough. We find that the possibility for network effects to lead to a Pareto improvement through merger is shown to depend on the number of outside firms.     

On contract duration of royalty licensing contracts

This paper explores how the choice of royalties and contract duration can be a device to mitigate opportunistic behavior in the presence of asymmetric information. It presents a model where an upstream patent holder with no production capabilities licenses a product innovation, by means of royalty-only contracts, to several downstream firms that produce and market the new product. In a two-period signaling model, the profitability of short-term and long-term contracts is compared, given that the licensees’ costs may be inferred by observation of their output levels. For a sufficiently large difference in production costs, the patentee introduces a series of short-term contracts, rather than a long-term contract for the entire expected lifetime of the innovation. In such a sequence of contracts, both high- and low-cost firms pay the same royalty rate (which is not higher than that of long-term contracts) and reveal their costs in the first licensing period. Thereafter, royalties are smaller (than in the first period) for high-cost firms but larger for low-cost producers so as to increase expected total output and licensing income. Overall, royalties are not time-decreasing, in expected terms, as information evolves from incomplete to complete. This strategy is typically welfare-improving.