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Luca Spinesi
IPR for Public and Private Innovation
 

Abstract: The empirical analyses show that public and private R&D are strongly intertwined. In particular, the existence of large direct spillovers from public funded R&D to private industry has extensively proven. From an institutional point of view, to stimulate the technology transfer from publicly funded R&D programs to private industry the U.S. adopted an uniform patent policy for public funded research, such as that guaranteed by the Bayh Dole Act. This paper contributes to explain this empirical evidence. Within a neo-Schumpeterian endogenous growth model, it is shown that the intellectual appropriation share of a new commercial valuable idea by private firms and the subsidy of private R&D cost are two equivalent ways to stimulate private R&D effort, and they affect in the same way the endogenous per capita output growth rate. The existence of a trade-off between the per capita output growth rate and level has found. The results show that once IPR are granted to public innovations, a different regime of patent protection should be set for private and public innovations. In particular, patents should only be granted to very innovative and fundamental public ideas.

 
JEL: O31, O34, O38
Keywords: Intellectual Property Rights, Private and Public R&D, Growth

 

 

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