Damages and Injunctions in the Protection of Proprietary Research Tools
(290 K)
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NBER Working Paper No. 7086
Issued in April 1999
NBER Program(s): PR LE
Profit on proprietary research tools is determined partly by the remedies for infringement, such as damages and injunctions. We investigate how damages under a liability rule and the opportunity for injunctions under a property rule can affect the incentives to develop research tools. We show that the prevailing legal doctrine of damages under liability rule, called lost profit or reasonable royalty, suffers from a logical circularity which leads to an indeterminacy in permissible damages. This can create insufficient incentives to develop research tools. Incentives can be improved either by a property rule with injunctions or by a liability rule under the doctrine of unjust enrichment.
Published: Schankerman, Mark & Scotchmer, Suzanne, 2001. "Damages and Injunctions in Protecting Intellectual Property," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(1), pages 199-220, Spring.
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