We study the question of optimal licensing contracts in a leadership structure and discuss the welfare implications. We assume that the size of the innovation is exogenous and the patent holder is a competitor in the product market. Then welfare depends on the types of contracts available and on the ownership of patents. In particular, we examine whether a leader's innovation is considered to be socially more valuable than a follower's innovation. We show that there are situations when a follower's innovation generates larger welfare. Given the private incentives for innovation, a licensing policy may induce the desired firm to win the patent race. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd and The Victoria University of Manchester, 2005.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.