Yair Tauman

General licensing schemes for a cost-reducing innovation

Two general forms of standard licensing policies are considered for a non-drastic cost-reducing innovation: (a) combination of an upfront fee and uniform linear royalty, and (b) combination of auction and uniform linear royalty. It is shown that in an oligopoly, the total reduction in the cost due to the innovation for the pre-innovation competitive output forms the lower bound of the payoffs of both outsider and incumbent innovators. Further, the private value of the patent is increasing in the magnitude of the innovation, while the Cournot price and the payoff of any other firm fall below their respective pre-innovation levels. Sufficiently significant innovations from an outsider innovator are licensed exclusively to a single firm. Otherwise, all other firms, except perhaps one, become licensees. The dissemination of the innovation is generally higher with an incumbent innovator compared to an outsider. For both outsider and incumbent innovators, the monopoly does not provide the highest incentive to innovate; for sufficiently insignificant innovations, it is the duopoly that does so, and, the industry size that provides the highest incentive increases with the magnitude of the innovation. Finally, it is argued that significant innovations are more likely to occur when the innovator is an incumbent firm.

Patent Licensing: The Inside Story

In this paper we compare and contrast the most profitable modes of licensing a cost-reducing invention by an inventor who is an industry incumbent with one who is not. We find that an industry incumbent favors licensing by means of a royalty per unit of output to which the new technology is applied while an outsider prefers to auction off a fixed number of licences outright. Our analysis also suggests that an outside inventor finds it most profitable to target greater cost-reducing inventions to monopolistic industries while an incumbent inventor favors competitive industries.

On the value of information in a strategic conflict

Abstract We consider a situation in which an agent M (the “maven”) possesses information relevant to the players of an n-person game in which he is not a participant. We define the “inducible set” as the set of all outcomes which can be made unique Nash equilibria of a game resulting from the mavens transmission of information. This inducible set is a formal expression of Ms ability to manipulate the game. We demonstrate some properties of the inducible set and characterize it for 2-person zero-sum games. Finally, we define the notion of the “value of information” possessed by M and provide an explicit formula to calculate this value in terms of the inducible set.

THE DETERMINATION OF MARGINAL COST PRICES UNDER A SET OF AXIOMS

THE MAIN PURPOSE of this paper is to provide an axiomatic approach to marginal cost (MC) pricing and to point out its similarity with Aumann-Shapley (A-S) pricing. The latter is a cost-sharing price mechanism discussed in [3 and 6] that is derived from a set of five natural axioms. In this paper we consider models in which there is one producer with a given technology who faces fixed input prices and produces a finite number of consumption goods. Thus, we can uniquely derive the cost function that describes the minimal cost of producing a given vector of consumption goods. By a price mechanism P(., ) we mean a rule or a function that associates with each cost function F and vector a of quantities, a vector of prices:

Optimal license fees for a new product

Abstract We compare how much profit an inventor of a patented new ‘superior’ product can realize by licensing its manufacture, for a fixed fee, to an oligopolistic industry producing an ‘inferior’ substitute. Our analysis is conducted in terms of a three stage noncooperative game involving n + 1 players: the inventor, acting as a Stackelberg leader, and the n firms. Analysis of subgame perfect equilibria in pure strategies of this game disclose the circumtances under which an inventors optimal behavior ultimately leads to production of both products and when it allows for the production of the ‘superior’ product only. An extreme case of the latter possibility, namely when the ‘superior’ product is produced by a monopolist, is characterized also.

An Axiomatic Approach to the Allocation of a Fixed Cost Through Prices

We study the allocation of fixed costs to the outputs of a multiproduct firm. First we allocate short-run fixed costs through A-S prices which allocate the long-run costs. Long-run cost functions do not generally contain a fixed cost component. We show what part of the A-S prices associated with the long-run cost is allocated to the fixed cost and what part is allocated to the variable cost of the short-run costs. Second, in those cases in which the fixed costs must be allocated directly, we alter the axioms characterizing A-S prices slightly to accommodate cost functions which have a fixed cost component and derive an allocation mechanism characterized by these axioms for cost functions including those with a fixed cost component

Licensing of a quality-improving innovation

We study the licensing of a quality-improving innovation in a duopoly model with heterogeneous consumers. Firms compete in prices facing a logit demand framework. The innovator is an outsider to the market and sells licenses via up front fee (determined in an auction), royalty or their combination. We show that if the market is covered then irrespective of the magnitude of the innovation both firms acquire the new technology and pay positive royalty and zero up-front fee. The increase in social welfare due to the innovation is totally extracted by the innovator. For the uncovered market case we show that if the consumer heterogeneity is sufficiently high, then both firms become licensees. The licensees pay positive royalty and zero up-front fee-if the value of an outside alternative option is low-and both positive royalty and positive up-front fee -- if the value of the outside alternative option is high.

The role of bundling in price competition

Abstract We focus on price competition between several multiproduct firms which produce differentiated systems, each consisting of two complementary products. Firms offer their products separately and/or as a bundle. Consumers are homogeneous but assign different values to different systems. We find that equilibrium always exists (unlike the case where bundling strategies are excluded), and consumers purchase socially best systems. Consumers extract the entire surplus unless a firm produces at least one of the components of every socially best system. We show that bundling may increase consumer surplus. A sufficient condition for a system to be sold as a bundle at a discount price is provided.

Supportability, Sustainability, and Subsidy-Free Prices

This article studies the relationships among the concepts of subsidy-free prices, anonymously equitable prices, supportability, and sustainability. In particular, we set out conditions under which these concepts are not vacuous. Several new sets of conditions under which a subsidy-free price vector is sustainable are also presented. For general, nonseparable demands, we establish the existence of an Aumann-Shapley price vector that is anonymously equitable and sustainable.

Patent licensing with spillovers

The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of spillover on extent of licensing when cost reducing innovation is introduced and licensed to a number of oligopolistic firms. We characterize the equilibrium number of licenses that are sold through an auction. An increase in the number of licenses has two effects. First, it increases the competition between the licensees. Second, due to spillover, the non-licensees become more efficient contributing to even more competition. We find that despite these effects, a patentee of a significant innovation will sell more licenses when there is spillover than without spillover thereby inducing even more competition. In this case, consumer surplus will be greater with spillover. However, if the innovation is less significant, then the patentee will sell less licenses with spillover thereby restrict competition. In this case the market price will be higher and the consumer surplus will be smaller.