Suzanne Scotchmer

On the Division of Profit in Sequential Innovation

In markets with sequential innovation, inventors of derivative improvements might undermine the profit of initial innovators through competition. Profit erosion can be mitigated by broadening the first innovators patent protection and/or by permitting cooperative agreements between initial innovators and later innovators. We investigate the policy that is most effective at ensuring the first innovator earns a large share of profit from the second-generation products it facilitates. In general, not all the profit can be transferred to the first innovator, and therefore patents should last longer when a sequence of innovations is undertaken by different firms rather than being concentrated in one firm.

Protecting Early Innovators: Should Second-Generation Products Be Patentable?

Incentives to develop basic technologies are greater if the patentholder profits from applications or other second-generation products. Assuming that such products infringe the basic patent and that there is not much delay between the innovations, I argue that (i) patents on second-generation products are not necessary to encourage their development and (ii) the patentholder of the basic technology collects a larger share of the profit if applications or other second generation products are not patentable.

On the Optimality of the Patent Renewal System

The patent system is mainly a renewal system: the patent life is chosen by the patentee in return for fees. I ask whether such a system can be justified by asymmetric information on costs and benefits of research. In such a model I show that renewal mechanisms (possibly with subsidies) are equivalent to direct revelation mechanisms and therefore cannot be improved on, regardless of the objective function. Under plausible circumstances, patents should have a uniform life, rather than varying in length, as typically occurs under a renewal system.

Clubs and the Market

This paper defines a general equilibrium model with exchange and club formation. Agents trade multiple private goods widely in the market, can belong to several clubs, and care about the characteristics of the other members of their clubs. The space of agents is a continuum, but clubs are finite. It is shown that (i) competitive equilibria exist, and (ii) the core coincides with the set of equilibrium states. The central subtlety is in modeling club memberships and expressing the notion that membership choices are consistent across the population.

The Law and Economics of Reverse Engineering

II. REVERSE ENGINEERING IN TRADITIONAL MANUFACTURING INDU STRIES ..................................................................................... 1582 A. A Legal Perspective on Reverse Engineering .......................... 1582 B. An Economic Perspective on Reverse Engineering ................. 1585 C. Anti-Plug-Mold Laws: An Exception to Reverse Engineering Rules? .................................................................. 1591

Local public goods and clubs

I discuss recent contributions to the theory of group formation and the provision of jointly consumed public goods and services. I highlight the distinction between models of pure group formation, and models where the formation of groups and the sharing of public goods are constrained by a division of geographic space into jurisdictions. Much of the literature concerns the distortions that arise when price systems or tax systems are constrained, for example, to serve the dual roles of redistributing income and funding public services. I also highlight the distortions that can arise from arbitrary divisions of space, and review recent contributions that emphasize the distortions that arise when there are both public and private providers of services. My focus is mainly on equilibrium concepts and policy instruments.

Damages and injunctions in protecting intellectual property

We investigate how liability rules and property rules protect intellectual property. Infringement might not be deterred under any of the enforcement regimes available. However, counterintuitively, a credible threat of infringement can actually benefit the patentholder. We compare the two doctrines of damages, lost profit (lost royalty) and unjust enrichment, and argue that unjust enrichment protects the patentholder better than lost royalty in the case of proprietary research tools. Both can be superior to a property rule, depending on how much delay is permitted before infringement is enjoined. For other proprietary products (end-user products, cost-reducing innovations), these conclusions can be reversed.

Contingent Fees for Attorneys: An Economic Analysis

When there is asymmetric information, contingent fees can allow clients to signal the qualities of their cases and attorneys to signal the quality of their advice. Thus, a well-informed client who has a high-quality case will be willing to pay a relatively high fixed fee and a relatively low contingency percentage, while a client with a low-quality case will prefer a low fixed fee and a high contingency percentage. In contrast, a well-informed high-quality attorney will signal her ability by working for a relatively high contingency percentage.

The Political Economy of Intellectual Property Treaties

Intellectual property treaties have two main types of provisions: national treatment of foreign inventors, and harmonization of protections. I characterize the circumstances in which countries would want to treat foreign inventors the same as national inventors. I then argue that national treatment of foreign inventors leads to stronger intellectual property protection than is optimal, and that this effect is exacerbated when protections must be harmonized. However levels of public and private R&D spending will be lower than if each country took account of the uncompensated externalities that its R&D spending confers on other countries. The stronger protection engendered by attempts at harmonization are a partial remedy.

Competitive equilibrium and the core in club economies with anonymous crowding

In club economies with anonymous crowding, competitive equilibrium states of the economy are efficient and coincide with the core when there is only one private good. Anonymous admission prices permit consumers with different tastes to share facilities. Consumers might do so when their demands for facility size and crowding coincide, in which case sharing is efficient. Thus, similarity of demands is the relevant consideration for efficiently grouping consumers with different tastes.