Abstract
A patent pool is an agreement by multiple patentholders to share intellectual property among themselves or to license a portfolio of patents as a package to outsiders. Patent pools were common in the United States from the 1890s to the 1940s; since the mid-1990s, there has been a resurgence of patent pools tied to technological standards. I discuss the history and antitrust treatment of patent pools in the United States, and review the related academic literature (both theoretical and empirical).
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Quint, D. (2018). Patent Pools. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2363
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2363
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