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Knowledge-Specific Patents and the Additionality Constraint

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Encyclopedia of Law and Economics

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This entry elaborates the implications for a new knowledge policy of the full range of effects of its limited appropriability and exhaustibility. The analysis of the appropriability trade-off identifies the dual effects of knowledge spillovers consisting not only in the reduction of incentives to the generation of knowledge but also in the reduction of R&D costs stemming from the access to the quasi-public stock of knowledge. The positive effects of knowledge spillover may compensate for the reduction of the price of innovated goods with its well-known negative effect in terms of reduced pay out of R&D activities and eventual underproduction of knowledge. The appreciation of the full spectrum of possibilities of the appropriability trade-off further refined by the analysis of the effects of the limited exhaustibility of knowledge and of the distinction between imitation and knowledge externalities enables to articulate a new framework of knowledge policy. These results, in...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Economia e Statistica “Cognetti de Martiis”, Università di Torino, Collegio Carlo Alberto, Torino, Italy

    Cristiano Antonelli

Authors
  1. Cristiano Antonelli
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cristiano Antonelli .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. MRE and University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France

    Alain Marciano

  2. Faculté d’Economie, Université de Montpellier and LAMETA-UMR CNRS, Montpellier, France

    Alain Marciano

  3. DiGSPES, University of Eastern Piedmont, Alessandria, Italy

    Giovanni Battista Ramello

  4. IEL, Torino, Italy

    Giovanni Battista Ramello

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Antonelli, C. (2019). Knowledge-Specific Patents and the Additionality Constraint. In: Marciano, A., Ramello, G.B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Law and Economics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7753-2_734

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