This article analyzes the "escape from competition effect" in a step-by-step framework in which a succesful firm may either leapfrog the previous leader or catch-up its technology. Innovation and growth are affected by both the intensity of competition and the probability of leapfrogging.

Marie-José Avenier (CERAG, Grenoble) réagit sur les questions épistémologiques soulevées dans le précédent numéro en défendant le paradigme constructiviste. Pour elle, il s'agit bien d'un paradigme même si elle distingue différents types de constructivisme, fondé sur des hypothèses...

Les recherches qualitatives se veulent souvent exploratoires : elles entendent inventer des concepts, proposer de nouvelles notions et théories. Dans le même temps, pour interpréter les données, elles manient des concepts existants. Mais bien souvent, les notions utilisées ou proposées...

Dans un livre récent, How professors think, Michèle Lamont (Harvard University) analyse la manière dont des chercheurs de différentes disciplines, réunis dans des comités, construisent un jugement collectif en sélectionnant des projets de recherche à financer. L'intérêt de l'ouvrage...

The Relations Between Science and Technology: what Implications for Public Policy? This article proposes an analysis of the science-technology interactions. The first part is historical and focuses on the transformations that resulted from the passage of a prescriptive knowledge (techniques) to...

This paper explores a licensor's choice between charging a per-unit royalty or a …fixed fee when her innovation is covered by a weak patent, i.e. a patent that is likely to be invali- dated by a court if challenged. Using a general model where the nature of competition is not speci…ed, we show...

In this paper we examine the implications of uncertainty over patent validity on patentholders' licensing strategies. Two licensing mechanisms are examined: per-unit royalty and up-front fee.We provide conditions under which uncertain patents are licensed in order to avoid patent litigation. It...

In this paper, we revisit the issue of licensing ‘weak' patents under the shadow of litigation. Departing from the seminal paper by Farrell and Shapiro [2008], we consider innovations of any size and not only ‘small' innovations, and we allow the number of licensees to be less than the...

L'article analyse les complémentarités et les tensions entre la concurrence et l'innovation tant du point de vue des instruments d'analyse que du point de vue des politiques économiques.

This paper investigates the choice of an intellectual protection regime for a process innovation. We set up a multi-stage model in which choosing between patent and trade secrecy is affected by three parameters : the patent strength defined as the probability that the right is upheld by the...