IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jindec/v55y2007i4p772-772.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Patent Length And The Timing Of Innovative Activity

Author

Listed:
  • JOSHUA S. GANS
  • STEPHEN P. KING

Abstract

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, patent can be socially desirable. This is because a patent breadth is a better instrument than length to encourage socially optimal timing. Thus, patents need not be infinitely long in order to encourage a greater number of inventions

Suggested Citation

  • Joshua S. Gans & Stephen P. King, 2007. "Patent Length And The Timing Of Innovative Activity," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(4), pages 772-772, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jindec:v:55:y:2007:i:4:p:772-772
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6451.2007.00329_2.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6451.2007.00329_2.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-6451.2007.00329_2.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Giulio Cainelli, 2008. "Spatial Agglomeration, Technological Innovations, and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Italian Industrial Districts," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(3), pages 414-435, September.
    2. Galasso, Alberto & Mitchell, Matthew & Virag, Gabor, 2016. "Market outcomes and dynamic patent buyouts," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 207-243.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jindec:v:55:y:2007:i:4:p:772-772. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0022-1821 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.