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Ziv M. Preis

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S.J.D. 2005

Email: zpreis@post.harvard.edu

Dissertation

The Incentive Theory of Patents in Action: The Effects of Patent Relief on the Incentive to Invent and the Incentive to Disclose

Patentees often argue that any intervention with their intellectual property rights will discourage their incentives to invent and to disclose their inventions. Patentees make such arguments with no empirical evidence that in fact such intervention will result in any adverse effect on their incentive to invent or to disclose their inventions. The dissertation provides empirical evidence to assess the existence of any adverse effect on the incentive to invent or to disclose, the magnitude of such adverse effect and the factors affecting such adverse effect. An examination of 54 Federal Trade Commission antitrust decrees from 1980 to 1999 reveals that antitrust decrees with substantial "compulsory licensing" provisions dilute the incentive to invent (as such incentive is measured through R&D activity) by approximately 30.7% to 36.4% and dilute the incentive to disclose (as such incentive is measured by patenting activity) by approximately 5.8% to 7.0%. The factors that might affect any adverse effect are the type of patent relief, the affected industry, whether a patentee was subject to such antitrust decrees in the past and whether a patentee is a foreign or domestic patentee.

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