Licensing in the presence of competing technologies

Abstract

In technology-based industries, many incumbent fIrms license their technology to other fIrms that will potentially compete with them. Such a strategy is diffIcult to explain within traditional models of licensing. This paper extends the literature on licensing by relaxing the widespread assumption of a "unique" technology holder. We develop a model with many technological trajectories for the production of a differentiated good. We fmd that competition in the market for technology induces licensing of innovations, and that the number of licenses can be ineffIciently large. A strong testable implication of our theory is that the number of licenses per patent holder decreases with the degree of product differentiation.