IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ysm/somwrk/ysm37.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Intellectual Property Rights and Contract Structure

Author

Listed:
  • Tarun Khanna

    (Competition & Strategy Unit)

  • Bharat N. Anand

    (Competition & Strategy Unit)

Abstract

Property rights over knowledge and its output--intellectual property rights--are often weak. We treat the strength of property rights as a primitive of the environment. We examine the effects of the strengths of these rights on the structure of contracts and relationships employed by firms in intellectual property transfers. Variation in the adequacy of property rights across industries allows us to identify these effects. Using a unique dataset assembled for this purpose, we find that firms will structure contracts to optimally circumscribe the threat of imitators. In particular, weak property rights are associated with a lower absolute and relative incidence of licensing activity, fewer licensings of prospective technologies, a higher incidence of transfers to related parties and non-exclusive contracts, and more cross-licensings. The results are not explained by unobserved heterogeneity or jointness in a licenser's decisions concerning various contractual features.

Suggested Citation

  • Tarun Khanna & Bharat N. Anand, 1996. "Intellectual Property Rights and Contract Structure," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm37, Yale School of Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:ysm:somwrk:ysm37
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4448
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Bessy, Christian & Brousseau, Eric, 1998. "Technology licensing contracts features and diversity1," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 451-489, December.
    2. Ashish Arora & Alfonso Gambardella & Enzo Rullani, 1997. "Division of Labour and the Locus of Inventive Activity," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 1(1), pages 123-140, March.
    3. Ramón Faulí-Oller & Joel Sandonís, 2001. "To Merge Or To License: Implications For Competition Policy," Working Papers. Serie AD 2001-05, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    4. Fauli-Oller, Ramon & Sandonis, Joel, 2003. "To merge or to license: implications for competition policy," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 21(5), pages 655-672, May.
    5. Arora, Ashish, 1997. "Patents, licensing, and market structure in the chemical industry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(4-5), pages 391-403, December.
    6. Antelo, Manel, 2003. "Licensing a non-drastic innovation under double informational asymmetry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 367-390, March.
    7. Jean O. Lanjouw & Mark Schankerman, 1997. "Stylized Facts of Patent Litigation: Value, Scope and Ownership," NBER Working Papers 6297, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. repec:wip:wpaper:3 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Contractor, Farok J. & Ra, Wonchan, 2000. "Negotiating alliance contracts: Strategy and behavioral effects of alternative compensation arrangements," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 271-299, June.
    10. Suma Athreye & Sandeep Kapur, 2015. "Capital and Technology Flows: changing technology-acquisition strategies in developing countries," Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance 1511, Birkbeck, Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics.
    11. Ying Li & Wim Vanhaverbeke, 2009. "The Relationships Between Foreign Competition, Absorptive Capacity And Pioneering Innovation: An Empirical Investigation In Canada," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 13(01), pages 105-137.
    12. Dennis Leyden & Albert Link, 2013. "Knowledge spillovers, collective entrepreneurship, and economic growth: the role of universities," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 41(4), pages 797-817, December.
    13. Lanjouw, Jenny & Schankerman, Mark, 1998. "Patent Suits: Do They Distort Research Incentives?," CEPR Discussion Papers 2042, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Arora, Ashish & Fosfuri, Andrea, 2003. "Licensing the market for technology," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 277-295, October.
    15. Suma Athreye & Yong Yang, 2011. "Disembodied Knowledge Flows in the World Economy," WIPO Economic Research Working Papers 03, World Intellectual Property Organization - Economics and Statistics Division, revised Dec 2011.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L20 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - General
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital

    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:ysm:somwrk:ysm37. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/smyalus.html .

    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.