Damages and Injunctions in the Protection of Proprietary Research Tools / Mark Schankerman, Suzanne Scotchmer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schankerman, Mark.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Scotchmer, Suzanne.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w7086.

NBER working paper series no. w7086

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1999.

Summary:

Profit on proprietary research tools is determined partly by the remedies for infringement, such as damages and injunctions. We investigate how damages under a liability rule and the opportunity for injunctions under a property rule can affect the incentives to develop research tools. We show that the prevailing legal doctrine of damages under liability rule, called lost profit or reasonable royalty, suffers from a logical circularity which leads to an indeterminacy in permissible damages. This can create insufficient incentives to develop research tools. Incentives can be improved either by a property rule with injunctions or by a liability rule under the doctrine of unjust enrichment.

Notes:

Print version record

April 1999.