An economic analysis of strategic information technology investments
MIS Quarterly - Special issue on the strategic use of information systems
Practical legal aspects of software reverse engineering
Communications of the ACM
Management Science
Winners, Losers & Microsoft; Competition and Antitrust in High Technology
Winners, Losers & Microsoft; Competition and Antitrust in High Technology
Information Goods Pricing and Copyright Enforcement: Welfare Analysis
Information Systems Research
Preventive and deterrent controls for software piracy
Journal of Management Information Systems
To purchase or to pirate software: an empirical study
Journal of Management Information Systems
Economic Implications of Variable Technology Standards for Movie Piracy in a Global Context
Journal of Management Information Systems
Software Piracy in the Workplace: A Model and Empirical Test
Journal of Management Information Systems
[Software patents] The good, the bad, and the messy
Communications of the ACM
An Economic Analysis of Policies for the Protection and Reuse of Noncopyrightable Database Contents
Journal of Management Information Systems
Digital Piracy: A Competitive Analysis
Marketing Science
Welfare analysis of alternative patent policies for software innovations
Decision Support Systems - Special issue: Economics and information systems
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We use a duopoly model of quality-price competition between a software innovator and an imitator to determine the socially optimal software patent policy and to assess the social welfare implications of alternative patent policies. We find that the optimal patent policy is to grant patent protection for the entire life of the innovative software product (i.e., set infinite patent length) and to set the novelty and nonobviousness requirement for attaining a patent (i.e., patent height) and the scope of patent protection (i.e., patent width) such that both the innovator and imitator produce higher-quality products than they would in the free market. This policy not only maximizes social welfare but also makes the innovator, imitator, and consumers better off than in the free market. However, counter to intuition, we find that firms exhibit lower research and development intensity under the socially optimal patent policy than they do under free market competition. While highly stylized, the model offers a useful framework within which researchers and regulators can think about the economic trade-offs among three patent policy parameters (length, height, and width) simultaneously.