Optimal Licensing Contract Research Articles

Exclusive and non-exclusive licensing with shelving

We consider a market of technology transfer and licensing with an outside innovator and two asymmetric potential licensees where the licensees have asymmetric absorptive capacities of a cost reducing innovation. The low-cost efficient licensee/firm can only benefit from the new technology if the size of the cost reducing innovation is strictly bigger than the cost difference from its competitor. The high-cost firm always benefits from the new technology regardless of the size of the innovation. This leads to the possibility of strategic shelving of the innovation by the efficient firm. Under this backdrop, we characterize the optimal licensing contracts of the outside innovator. We find that in equilibrium, the innovator will use a fixed fee contract for some parameters and royalty or two-part tariff contract(s) for other parameters. Equilibrium fixed fees and royalty rates will also vary depending on the cost asymmetry and the size of the innovation. The optimal licensing contracts can be exclusive or non-exclusive, and shelving of the new technology may or may not happen which has welfare implications. We also investigate the first- and second-best licensing contracts in this environment and discuss their possible implementation.

OPTIMAL LICENSING STRATEGY OF GREEN TECHNOLOGY WITH CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

This study investigates the green technology licensing strategies of firms with corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a duopoly market. The results show that in the absence of CSR, the optimal licensing contract is fixed-fee licensing for a patent holding firm. In the precent of CSR, the optimal licensing contract for a patent holding firm switches from fixed-fee licensing to royalty licensing with increasing level of CSR if the reduction cost of emissions is high. Moreover, we show that the profit goal of firm and the social welfare goal of government are not always mutually exclusive. If the level of CSR is low, a uniform licensing contract would be preferable. If the level of CSR is high, the optimal licensing contract is inconsistent. Finally, we show that CSR is not always beneficial to the social welfare while CSR benefits the environment. Social welfare benefits from increased CSR degree, but vice versa is true when CSR degree decreases. This research may provide valuable insights into licensing and CSR literature.

Optimal technology licensing contract with quality improvement innovation under Cournot competition

This paper analyzes the optimal licensing contract for the patentor with a quality improvement innovation in a Cournot duopoly market. We examine and compare three licensing contracts (fixed-fee licensing, royalty licensing, and two-part ad valorem licensing) in terms of the patent-holding firm’s profit, consumer surplus, and social welfare. We also study the impact of quality differences on the choice of licensing contract. One might expect that consumer surplus and social welfare are greater under fixed-fee licensing. However, we show that this conclusion seems to be untrue under quality improvement technology licensing. Moreover, we find that (1) there exists a threshold for the degree of quality difference above which fixed-fee licensing will be listed for the consideration of the patent-holding firm and below which it will be abandoned; (2) royalty licensing and two-part ad valorem licensing are always profitable for the patent-holding firm and two-part ad valorem licensing brings the patentee the most profit.

LICENSING BY OUTSIDE INNOVATOR IN HOTELLING MODEL REVISITED

This paper extends Banerjee and Poddar [Banerjee, S and S Poddar (2019). ‘To sell or not to sell’: Licensing versus selling by an outside innovator. Economic Modelling, 76, 293–304] by lifting the cap on per unit royalty rates in the cases of royalty licensing and two-part tariff licensing. We reconsider the optimal technology licensing contract by an outside innovator facing two heterogeneous licensees in a standard Hotelling framework. Our findings show that the optimal licensing policy could be fixed fee to the efficient firm, or two-part tariff to both firms (pure royalty to both firms), or two-part tariff to the efficient firm, depending upon the cost differentials between the firms and the size of innovation.

Optimal licensing strategy of green technology in a mixed oligopoly: Fixed fee versus royalty

This paper develops a mixed oligopoly model to explore the optimal licensing strategy of green technology. In our model, either private firm or public firm could be the patentee. We show that when the private firm is the patentee, all the two types of licensing contracts (i.e., fixed fee and royalty) are optimal. However, when the public firm is the patentee, the fixed fee licensing is the optimal licensing contract. We examine the welfare consequence of a privatization policy under the optimal licensing contract and show that the privatization policy hinder the improvement of social welfare.

Technology transfer in spatial competition when licensees are asymmetric

AbstractWe study technology transfer in a spatial competition with two asymmetric licensees (firms) with an outside innovator who decides how many licenses to offer and the optimal licensing contract. We show the optimal licensing policy is pure royalty contract to both licensees leading to a complete diffusion of the new technology. The result holds irrespective of the cost differentials between the licensees and for innovation of all sizes, that is, drastic or non‐drastic. This robust finding although supports the dominance of royalty licensing in practice; however, consumers may not be necessarily better off. We also throw light on the situation where the innovator sells the patent right to one of the firms. Interestingly, we find that the inefficient firm acquires the new technology and further licenses it to the efficient rival.

Optimal Licensing Contract: The Implications of Preference Function

Our analysis provides a rationale for the existence of a positive fixed-fee and output royalty in the licensing contracts. In this article, we show that the preference functions play an important role in this respect. As the market expansion effect gets weaker, it reduces the possibility of a royalty-only contract, thus increasing the possibility of the co-existence of a positive fixed-fee and output royalty in the licensing contract. Our argument is different from the existing reasons based on imitation, number of firms, product differentiation and decreasing returns to scale. JEL: D21, D43, L13

What Goes Around, Comes Around: Reciprocal Effects and Double-Sided Moral Hazard in the Choice of Brand Licensing

Extending a brand beyond its original product category is a major strategy for long-term profitability. A brand owner can internalize the development of the extension product, or license the brand to an external partner in order to exploit the licensee’s better capabilities and higher efficiency on the targeted market. Brand extension is characterized by the presence of the socalled reciprocal effect, whereby the effort exerted to develop and market the extension has a feedback effect – either positive or negative – on the value of the parent brand. Under licensing, this effect is an externality from the standpoint of the brand owner. The licensing relationship is characterized by double-sided moral hazard, requiring an incentivizing contract; the reciprocal effect adds a further element that should be governed by the contract. Indeed, a positive effect can boost the attractiveness of licensing relative to internal development, whereas a negative one can have the opposite effect. Drawing from extant literature, we build a game-theoretical model and show how reciprocal effect, (dis)similarity between the extension product and the parent brand, and (in)efficiency of the brand owner relative to the licensee in developing the extension shape the optimal licensing contract and affect the choice between internal development and licensing.

Welfare improving licensing with endogenous choice of prices versus quantities

This paper investigates the endogenous choice of prices versus quantities by taking into account patent licensing where the patent holder, which is itself a producer within the industry, licenses its cost-reducing innovation to the rival firm through a two-part tariff contract. For substitute products we find that both Cournot and mixed price-quantity competition may constitute the equilibrium outcomes, depending on the innovation size. Contrary to the results in Fauli-Oller and Sandonis (2002), we show that the optimal licensing contract definitely leads to an increase in social welfare. Our result reinforces the positive welfare effect of patent licensing.

Optimal licensing schemes for a mixed ownership firm when facing uncertain R&D outcomes and technology spillover

In this paper, we develop a mixed Cournot duopoly model to investigate whether and how a mixed ownership firm licenses its non-drastic innovation to the private rival when facing uncertain R&D outcomes and technology spillover. The results show that, (i) in terms of fixed-fee and royalty licensing, the optimal licensing contract is always the fixed-fee when the private share is low, while it is always the royalty when both the private share and product substitutability are sufficiently high. As for other cases, whether the fixed-fee is superior to the royalty also depends on the degree of technology spillover; and (ii) even if the two-part tariff is available for the mixed firm, the fixed-fee alone is still one possible form of the optimal licensing contract. Moreover, the finding also shows that the probability of R&D success plays a critical role in the process of determining the licensing strategy for the mixed firm.

Optimal licensing in a differentiated Bertrand market under uncertain R&D outcomes and technology spillover

This paper studies the licensing behavior in a differentiated Bertrand duopoly market in which the innovative firm engages in a cost-reducing R&D with uncertain outcomes. We also assume that there will be technology spillover if R&D ends in success. The results show that, in the case of a non-drastic innovation with uncertain outcomes, (i) the optimal licensing contract in terms of fixed-fee and royalty licensing is fixed-fee licensing when product substitution and technology spillover are both small, while it is royalty licensing otherwise; and (ii) if two-part tariff licensing is available, it is superior (equivalent) to royalty licensing when technology spillover is small (large), but always better than fixed-fee licensing for any degree of product substitution and technology spillover. Moreover, the results also indicate that the probability of R&D success in each licensing method plays an important role in determining the innovative firm's optimal licensing strategy.

Patent licensing under financial structure with limited liability

In a seminal paper, Kamien and Tauman (1986) show that fixedfee licensing is always superior to royalty licensing for the outsider licensor under Cournot competition. However, empirical studies demonstrate that royalty licensing is much more popular than fixed-fee licensing. We attempt to reconcile this controversy by taking into account the financial structure of firms with limited liability. We show that the optimal licensing contract under Cournot competition is royalty licensing if the mean-preserving variance of demand is large, while it is non-exclusive fixed-fee licensing otherwise. Moreover, this result is robust under mixed licensing contract and an oligopolistic market.

Patent Licensing in the Presence of Trade Barriers

We develop a two-country duopoly model to explore the optimal licensing contract for an outsider licensor in terms of fixed-fee and royalty licensing by taking into account trade barriers when firms produce a homogeneous product and engage in Bertrand competition in each market. The present paper focuses on the interaction between licensing and trade barriers in two international markets. We show that both royalty and non-exclusive fixed-fee licensing can be optimal. Furthermore, exclusive fixed-fee licensing can be optimal, which is a result that is not discussed in the existing literature.

Optimal know-how transfers in licensing contracts

This paper studies optimal licensing contracts in the presence of moral hazard associated with costly provision of know-how by the licensor. In our setting, the target market is defined as the fraction of consumers that have a positive valuation for the product that is licensed. It is shown that, no matter how thin the target market is, know-how transfer always takes place. Consistent with actual practice, the optimal licensing contract includes a royalty on sales to attenuate the moral hazard problem. However, full know-how transfer will not occur for low enough maximum willingness to pay and high enough convexity of know-how cost. Finally, it is also shown that the effective (inclusive of the royalty) marginal cost exceeds the one when know-how transfer does not occur thus showing a potential malfunction of know-how transfer specially if the recipient is a developing country.

Optimal licensing with equity

AbstractThe existing literature for an insider patentee indicates that the optimal licensing contract is royalty licensing under Bertrand competition. This paper explores licensing by means of royalty licensing and equity licensing in a Hotelling linear city model. Given a covered market, this paper shows that the insider patentee would like to choose equity licensing when the transport rate relative to the innovation size is large, while selecting royalty licensing otherwise. Next, provided that the market is uncovered post licensing, this paper finds that equity and fixed‐fee licensing are indifferent to the patentee and are both superior to royalty licensing.

Technology Licensing and Shareholding in Vertically-Related Markets

This paper explores the optimal licensing contract, in which the manufacture firm holds the equity of the retail firm and licenses the cost-reducing innovation to the vertically integrated firm. The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of the retail firm’s equity on the manufacture firm’s licensing decisions. The paper shows that the manufacture firm prefers royalty (fixed-fee) licensing when the manufacture firm holds large (small) equity of the retail firm.

Licensing in the Context of Entrepreneurial University Activity: an Empirical Evidence and a Theoretical Model

US universities are leading the way in technology commercialization and licensing. This paper discusses the practice of licensing at the US universities, as well as the main directions and tasks of technology commercialization and licensing at the University of Maryland. Universities and research centers can implement steps to improve their technology commercialization and licensing negotiation by using solid analytical models. In the following sections, we suggest and describe a game-theoretic model to analyze, understand, and anticipate the behavioral profiles of inventors, entrepreneurs, and innovators on a dynamic interactive basis and in the context of a university or research center linkages with the market (of the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem) in pursuit of designing an optimal (or feasibly sub-optimal) licensing contract.

Technology licensing in mixed oligopoly

We develop a mixed oligopoly model with one public firm and two private firms to explore the licensing strategy considered by the innovated private firm. The major findings of our paper are that: firstly, if the patentee licenses the public firm under some plausible parametric range, the public firm will not accept the technology licensing offer from the private firm; secondly, if the public firm accepts the licensing, all of the three different types of licensing contracts (royalty, fixed-fee and two-part tariff) can be the same optimal licensing contracts; thirdly, if the patentee licenses to another private firm, fixed-fee licensing will be the optimal choice for the patentee; finally, licensing to the public firm and another private firm simultaneously is not the best strategy for the patentee when the original cost difference between public and private firms is large. Our results are quite different from the previous on the licensing strategy among private firms.

The Optimal Licensing Contract in a Differentiated Stackelberg Model

This paper extends the work of Wang (2002) by considering a differentiated Stackelberg model, when the leader firm is an inside innovator and licenses its new technology by three options, that is, fixed-fee licensing, royalty licensing, and two-part tariff licensing. The main contributions and conclusions of this paper are threefold. First of all, this paper derives a very different result from Wang (2002). We show that, with a nondrastic innovation, royalty licensing is always better than fixed-fee licensing for the innovator; with a drastic innovation, royalty licensing is superior to fixed-fee licensing for small values of substitution coefficient d; however when d becomes closer to 1, neither fee nor royalty licensing will occur. Secondly, this paper shows that the innovator is always better off in case of two-part tariff licensing than fixed-fee licensing no matter what the innovation size is. Thirdly, the innovator always prefers to license its nondrastic innovation by means of a two-part tariff instead of licensing by means of a royalty; however, with a drastic innovation, the optimal licensing strategy can be either a two-part tariff or a royalty, depending upon the differentiation of the goods.

Licensing to Vertically Related Markets

We analyse the problem of a non-producing patentee who licenses an essential process innovation to a vertical Cournot oligopoly. The vertical oligopoly is composed of an upstream and a downstream sector which may differ in their efficiency or, in other words, in the benefit they derive from the innovation. In this framework we characterise the optimal licensing contract in terms of the licensing revenue maximising policy (fixed-fee or per-unit royalty) and sector (upstream and/or downstream sector). First, it is shown that under a fixed-fee contract licensing to the less efficient industry sector may be the patentee's licensing revenue maximising strategy. Here, licensing to a less efficient downstream market is all the time optimal in terms of consumer surplus and aggregate economic welfare. Conversely, licensing to a less or equally efficient upstream industry is potentially inefficient. Second, our findings reveal that the optimal licensing policy is sector dependent. A per-unit royalty contract may dominate a fixed-fee policy on the downstream market in terms of licensing revenues, while offering a per-unit royalty contract to the upstream industry is never optimal. As a third and final point we address the case of licensing to both industry sectors. Here we also identify conditions under which two-sector licensing of both sectors is less profitable than one-sector licensing of a single industry (and vice versa).