IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jindec/v70y2022i2p257-293.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Antitrust Limits on Patent Settlements: A New Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Erik Hovenkamp
  • Jorge Lemus

Abstract

Patent settlements between rivals restrain competition in many different ways. Antitrust requires that their anticompetitive effects are reasonably commensurate with the firms' expectations about (counterfactual) patent litigation. Because these expectations are private and non‐verifiable, this standard is hard to administer; to date, it has been successfully applied only within a very narrow class of agreements. We show that it can be applied universally by policing the economic structure of the firms' contract. This approach determines whether settlement outcomes will be antitrust‐compliant for any private beliefs the firms might have, thus avoiding the need to speculate about such beliefs.

Suggested Citation

  • Erik Hovenkamp & Jorge Lemus, 2022. "Antitrust Limits on Patent Settlements: A New Approach," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(2), pages 257-293, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jindec:v:70:y:2022:i:2:p:257-293
    DOI: 10.1111/joie.12288
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/joie.12288
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/joie.12288?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jing-Yuan Chiou & Richard Schmidtke, 2012. "Revisiting Antitrust Limits to Probabilistic Patent Disputes: Strategic Entry and Asymmetric Information," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 14(2), pages 425-456.
    2. Shapiro, Carl, 2003. "Antitrust Limits to Patent Settlements," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(2), pages 391-411, Summer.
    3. Hovenkamp, Erik & Lemus, Jorge, 2018. "Delayed entry settlements at the patent office," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 30-38.
    4. A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), 2007. "Handbook of Law and Economics," Handbook of Law and Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    5. Hugo Hopenhayn & Gerard Llobet & Matthew Mitchell, 2006. "Rewarding Sequential Innovators: Prizes, Patents, and Buyouts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(6), pages 1041-1068, December.
    6. Jay Pil Choi, 2005. "Live and Let Live: A Tale of Weak Patents," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(2-3), pages 724-733, 04/05.
    7. William D. Nordhaus, 1967. "The Optimal Life of a Patent," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 241, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    8. Michael J. Meurer, 1989. "The Settlement of Patent Litigation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 20(1), pages 77-91, Spring.
    9. A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), 2007. "Handbook of Law and Economics," Handbook of Law and Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    10. Gabriel Carroll, 2017. "Robustness and Separation in Multidimensional Screening," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 453-488, March.
    11. Fiona Scott Morton & Carl Shapiro, 2016. "Patent Assertions: Are We Any Closer to Aligning Reward to Contribution?," Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(1), pages 89-133.
    12. Gabriel Carroll, 2019. "Robustness in Mechanism Design and Contracting," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 139-166, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mark Schankerman & Florian Schuett, 2022. "Patent Screening, Innovation, and Welfare," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(4), pages 2101-2148.
    2. Rockett, Katharine, 2010. "Property Rights and Invention," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 315-380, Elsevier.
    3. Bertrand Chopard & Thomas Cortade & Eric Langlais, 2014. "On patent strength, litigation costs, and patent disputes under alternative damage rules," Working Papers hal-04141316, HAL.
    4. Tuomas Takalo, 2012. "Rationales and Instruments for Public Innovation Policies," Journal of Reviews on Global Economics, Lifescience Global, vol. 1, pages 157-167.
    5. Hong Luo & Julie Holland Mortimer, 2017. "Copyright Enforcement: Evidence from Two Field Experiments," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(2), pages 499-528, June.
    6. Bertrand Chopard & Thomas Cortade & Eric Langlais, 2013. "Damage rules and the patent hold-up problem : An analysis of Article L. 615-7," EconomiX Working Papers 2013-37, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    7. He, Leshui, 2020. "A theory of pre-filing settlement and patent assertion entities," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    8. Thomas D. Jeitschko & Byung-Cheol Kim, 2013. "Signaling, Learning, and Screening Prior to Trial: Informational Implications of Preliminary Injunctions," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(5), pages 1085-1113, October.
    9. Bogdan Genchev & Julie Holland Mortimer, 2016. "Empirical Evidence on Conditional Pricing Practices," NBER Working Papers 22313, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Joseph Farrell & Carl Shapiro, 2008. "How Strong Are Weak Patents?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1347-1369, September.
    11. Mitchell, Matthew & Zhang, Yuzhe, 2012. "Shared Rights and Technological Progress," MPRA Paper 36537, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Andrzej Baniak & Peter Grajzl, 2017. "Optimal Liability when Consumers Mispredict Product Usage," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 19(1), pages 202-243.
    13. Mostafa Beshkar & Jee-Hyeong Park, 2017. "Dispute Settlement with Second-Order Uncertainty: The Case of International Trade Disputes," CAEPR Working Papers 2017-010, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington.
    14. Menusch Khadjavi, 2018. "Deterrence works for criminals," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 165-178, August.
    15. Sophie Bienenstock, 2019. "The Deterrent Effect of French Liability Law: the Example of Abusive Contract Terms," Post-Print hal-03222207, HAL.
    16. Alberto Galasso & Hong Luo, 2018. "Punishing Robots: Issues in the Economics of Tort Liability and Innovation in Artificial Intelligence," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda, pages 493-504, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Matteo Migheli & Giovanni Battista Ramello, 2018. "The market of academic attention," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(1), pages 113-133, January.
    18. Dennis, Richard & Kirsanova, Tatiana, 2016. "Computing Markov-Perfect Optimal Policies In Business-Cycle Models," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(7), pages 1850-1872, October.
    19. Fluet, Claude, 2020. "L'économie de la preuve judiciaire," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 96(4), pages 585-620, Décembre.
    20. Goerke, Laszlo & Neugart, Michael, 2015. "Lobbying and dismissal dispute resolution systems," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 50-62.

    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:70:y:2022:i:2:p:257-293. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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.