Compulsory licensing and innovation - Historical evidence from German patents after WWI

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Baten, Joerg; Bianchi, Nicola; Moser, Petra
• 署名单位: Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Northwestern University; New York University; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2017.01.002
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 231-242
• 关键词: innovation; patents; Compulsory licensing; TRIPS; intellectual property; Economic history

摘要

Compulsory licensing allows governments to license patented inventions without the consent of patent owners. Intended to mitigate the potential welfare losses from enforcing foreign-owned patents, many developing countries use this policy to improve access to drugs that are covered by foreign -owned patents. The effects of compulsory licensing on access to new drugs, however, are theoretically ambiguous: Compulsory licensing may encourage innovation by increasing competition or discourage innovation by reducing expected returns to R& D. Empirical evidence is rare, primarily because contemporary settings offer little exogenous variation in compulsory licensing. We address this empirical challenge by exploiting an event of compulsory licensing as a result of World War I when the US Trading with the Enemy Act made all German -owned patents available for licensing to US firms. Firm-level data on German patents indicate that compulsory licensing was associated with a 30 percent increase in invention by German firms whose inventions were licensed.