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"Essential" Patents, FRAND Royalties and Technological Standards

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Author Info
Mathias Dewatripont
Patrick Legros

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Abstract

In this paper we abandon the usual assumption that patents bring known benefits to the industry or that their benefits are known to all parties. When royalty payments are increasing in one's patent portfolio, private information about the quality of patents leads to a variety of distortions, in particular the incentives of firms to "pad" by contributing weak patents. Three main results that emerge from the analysis are that: (i) the threat of court disputes reduces incentives to pad but at the cost of lower production of strong patents; (ii) mitigating this undesirable side-effect calls for a simultaneous increase in the cost of padding, that is, a better filtering of patent applications; (iii) upstream firms have more incentives to pad than vertically-integrated firms which internalize the fact that patent proliferation raises the share of profits going to the upstream segment of the industry but at the expense of its downstream segment. This seems consistent with recent evidence concerning padding.

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File Function: First version, 2008
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Université Libre de Bruxelles, Ecares in its series ECARES Working Papers with number 2008_010.

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Length: 30 pages
Date of creation: 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:eca:wpaper:2008_010

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Related research
Keywords: padding; royalty; standard setting organization; weak patent; Frand;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
L24 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Contracting Out; Joint Ventures
L40 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - General
O31 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
O34 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Intellectual Property Rights

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Joseph Farrell & Carl Shapiro, 2008. "How Strong Are Weak Patents?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1347-69, September. [Downloadable!]
  2. Mark A. Lemley & Carl Shapiro, 2005. "Probabilistic Patents," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 75-98, Spring. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-58, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  4. Josh Lerner & Jean Tirole, 2004. "Efficient Patent Pools," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 691-711, June. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Reiko Aoki & Sadao Nagaoka, 2004. "The Consortium Standard and Patent Pools," Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series d04-32, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. Carl Shapiro, 2001. "Navigating the Patent Thicket: Cross Licenses, Patent Pools, and Standard Setting," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 1, pages 119-150 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  7. Rachel E. Kranton & Deborah F. Minehart, 2000. "Networks versus Vertical Integration," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 31(3), pages 570-601, Autumn.
  8. Benjamin Chiao & Josh Lerner & Jean Tirole, 2005. "The Rules of Standard Setting Organizations: An Empirical Analysis," NBER Working Papers 11156, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  9. Aoki, Reiko & Nagaoka, Sadao, 2004. "The Consortium Standard and Patent Pools," Discussion Paper 222, Center for Intergenerational Studies, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University. [Downloadable!]
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Klaus M. Schmidt, 2008. "Complementary Patents and Market Structure," Discussion Papers 249, SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich. [Downloadable!]
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