We investigate empirically how the Japanese patent system has affected postwar growth in Japanese total factor productivity. The system has been criticized for several reasons, including that it encourages numerous filings of narrow claims that build incrementally on fundamental technologies developed by domestic and foreign inventors. Stated in different terms, the system was designed to promo...

In a world where poor countries provide weak protection for intellectual property rights, market integration will systematically shift technical change in favor of rich nations. For this reason, free trade can increase international income differences. At the same time, integration with countries where intellectual property rights are weakly protected can have a large adverse effect on the worl...

This paper analyzes the effect of imitation on the rate of technological progress in an endogenous growth model. Quality leaders protect themselves from imitation by secondary development, which increases technological progress. Nevertheless, lower intellectual property rights protection reduces the incentives to enter the research sector, which lowers innovation by outsiders. Simulations show ...

Nearly a decade after the Federal Circuit decision in State Street, patents on computerimplemented methods of doing business have become commonplace. To date, there is little evidence of any effect on the rate of innovation or R&D among firms in financial services. Indeed, measuring such effects presents difficult problems for researchers. We do know that some of these patents are successfully ...

In this study, I examine immaterial property rights in an economy where R&D firms innovate and imitate and households face nondiversifiable risk. Some property rights postpone the expected time an innovation will be imitated (e.g. increase the “length” of an innovation), while the others protect the imitator’s profits after a successful imitation (i.e. increase the “width” of an innovation). Th...

The standard result in patent policy, as demonstrated by Gilbert and Shapiro (1990), is that infinitely lived but very narrow patents are optimal as deadweight losses are minimised and spread through time but inventors can still recover their R&D expenditures. By extending their innovative environment to include timing as an important choice, we demonstrate that a finitely lived, but broader, p...

Universities are engaging in more licensing and patenting activities than ever before, and the amount of research funded by industry is increasing. Academics' commercialization activities may inhibit traditional academic scholarship. If the output of such scholarship is an important input into technological innovation and economic growth, then such an inhibition would be cause for concern. We i...

In this paper, IP strategy at firm level is analyzed in a framework of use of patent as a tool for maximizing firm’s revenue, based on a dataset from JPO’s Survey of Intellectual Property Activities in 2004. Descriptive regressions of IP strategy indicators suggest a non-linear relationship between firm size and licensing propensity. For a small firm with less complementary assets, such as prod...

We show that when the researcher’s (observable but not contractible) contribution to innovation is crucial, a covenant not to compete (CNC) reduces effort and profits under both spot and relational contracts. Having no CNC allows the researcher to leave for a rival. This alleviates a commitment problem by forcing the firm to reward a successful researcher. However, if the firm’s R&D investment ...

In this paper we present and analyze a stylized model of endogenous growth with international technology spillover effects from the North to the South. The model allows for endogenous structural change and environmental degradation that reduces world output. We find that within this framework the costless technological spillovers foster structural change in both more and less advanced economies...