IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/iepoli/v32y2015icp38-45.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Copyright protection and entry deterrence

Author

Listed:
  • Inceoglu, Firat

Abstract

Illegal copying of digital products has become an increasingly debated issue. I present a previously unmentioned possible effect of piracy, namely that it may benefit an incumbent producer by making entry less profitable. In a differentiated products setting I show that when entry costs or the consumer valuation of the product are high enough or when consumer heterogeneity is sufficiently low, an incumbent monopolist will prefer less than full protection and thus allow the piracy of its own product. When the consumer valuations for the good are high, then there is no market expansion effect of illegal copying and consumers might end up worse-off because of piracy.

Suggested Citation

  • Inceoglu, Firat, 2015. "Copyright protection and entry deterrence," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 38-45.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:iepoli:v:32:y:2015:i:c:p:38-45
    DOI: 10.1016/j.infoecopol.2015.07.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167624515000220
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.infoecopol.2015.07.001?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bae, Sang Hoo & Choi, Jay Pil, 2006. "A model of piracy," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 303-320, September.
    2. Johnson, William R, 1985. "The Economics of Copying," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(1), pages 158-174, February.
    3. Kathleen Reavis Conner & Richard P. Rumelt, 1991. "Software Piracy: An Analysis of Protection Strategies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 37(2), pages 125-139, February.
    4. Piolatto, Amedeo & Schuett, Florian, 2012. "Music piracy: A case of “The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer”," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 30-39.
    5. Yoon, Kiho, 2002. "The optimal level of copyright protection," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 327-348, September.
    6. Oz Shy & Jacques‐Françlois Thisse, 1999. "A Strategic Approach to Software Protection," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(2), pages 163-190, June.
    7. Peitz, Martin & Waelbroeck, Patrick, 2006. "Why the music industry may gain from free downloading -- The role of sampling," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 907-913, September.
    8. Yeh-ning Chen & Ivan Png, 2003. "Information Goods Pricing and Copyright Enforcement: Welfare Analysis," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 14(1), pages 107-123, March.
    9. Peitz, Martin & Waldfogel, Joel, 2012. "The Oxford Handbook of the Digital Economy," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195397840.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. T. Randolph Beard & George S. Ford & Gilad Sorek & Lawrence J. Spiwak, 2018. "Piracy, Imitation, and Optimal Copyright Policy," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(3), pages 815-830, January.

    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. Ming Chang & Chiu Lin & Dachrahn Wu, 2008. "Piracy and limited liability," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 95(1), pages 25-53, October.
    2. Rasch, Alexander & Wenzel, Tobias, 2015. "The impact of piracy on prominent and non-prominent software developers," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(8), pages 735-744.
    3. Žigić, Krešimir & Střelický, Jiří & Kúnin, Michael, 2023. "Copyright and firms’ own IPR protection in a software market: Monopoly versus duopoly," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    4. Tsai, Ming-Fang & Chiou, Jiunn-Rong & Lin, Chun-Hung A., 2012. "A model of counterfeiting: A duopoly approach," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 283-291.
    5. Kresimir Zigic & Jiri Strelicky & Michal Kunin, 2020. "Private and Public IPR Protection in a Vertically Differentiated Software Duopoly," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp671, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    6. Arun Sundararajan, 2003. "Managing Digital Piracy: Pricing, Protection and Welfare," Law and Economics 0307001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Rasch, Alexander & Wenzel, Tobias, 2013. "Piracy in a two-sided software market," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 78-89.
    8. Chang, Yang-Ming & Walter, Jason, 2015. "Digital piracy: Price-quality competition between legal firms and P2P network hosts," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 22-32.
    9. Cho, Won-Young & Ahn, Byong-Hun, 2010. "Versioning of information goods under the threat of piracy," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 332-340, December.
    10. Rick Harbaugh & Rahul Khemka, 2010. "Does Copyright Enforcement Encourage Piracy?," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(2), pages 306-323, June.
    11. Jean-Jacques Herings, P. & Peeters, Ronald & Yang, Michael S., 2010. "Competition against peer-to-peer networks," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 315-331, December.
    12. Piolatto, Amedeo & Schuett, Florian, 2012. "Music piracy: A case of “The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer”," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 30-39.
    13. Xinyu Hua & Kathryn E. Spier, 2023. "Settling Lawsuits With Pirates," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(2), pages 543-575, May.
    14. Gokhan Ozertan & Baris Cevik, 2008. "Pricing Strategies and Protection of Digital Products Under Presence of Piracy: A Welfare Analysis," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 11(4), pages 1-1.
    15. Yuanzhu Lu & Sougata Poddar, 2019. "Limiting End-user Piracy - The Role of Private and Public Anti-Piracy Measure," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 20(1), pages 181-197, May.
    16. Peitz, Martin & Waelbroeck, Patrick, 2006. "Piracy of digital products: A critical review of the theoretical literature," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 449-476, November.
    17. Shin-yi Wu & Pei-yu Chen, 2008. "Versioning and Piracy Control for Digital Information Goods," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 56(1), pages 157-172, February.
    18. William M. Volckmann, 2023. "The effects of market size, wealth, and network effects on digital piracy and profit," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 61-85, February.
    19. Ünlü, Vural & Hess, Thomas, 2003. "The optimal level of technical copyright protection: A game-theoretic approach," Working Papers 9/2003, University of Munich, Munich School of Management, Institute for Information Systems and New Media.
    20. Nie, Jiajia & Zhong, Ling & Li, Gendao & Cao, Kuo, 2022. "Piracy as an entry deterrence strategy in software market," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 298(2), pages 560-572.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Piracy; IP protection; Entry deterrence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices
    • K39 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Other

    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:eee:iepoli:v:32:y:2015:i:c:p:38-45. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505549 .

    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.