TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hopenhayn,Hugo A.
AU  - Mitchell,Matthew F.
TI  - Innovation Fertility and Patent Design
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7070
PY  - 1999
Y2  - April 1999
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7070
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7070.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Hugo Hopenhayn
UCLA
Department of Economics
Los Angeles, CA  90095
Tel: 310/206-8896
E-Mail: hopen@econ.ucla.edu
AB  - It may be advantageous to provide a variety of kinds of patent protection to heterogenous innovations. Innovations which benefit society largely through their use as building blocks to future inventions may require a different scope of protection in order to be encouraged. We model the problem of designing an optimal patent menu (scope and length) when the fertility of an innovation in generating more innovations cannot be observed. The menu of patent scope can be implemented with mandated buyout fees. Evidence of heterogeneous fertility and patent obsolescence, keys to the model, are presented using patent data from the US.
ER  -