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thicket_def_extract={The problem Baker describes is often called a "patent thicket." These occur when each product may involve many patents, in contrast with the one-to-one correspondence between products and patents that is assumed in the patent race literature. Recent commentators suggest that lower patenting standards encourage patent thickets, creating difficulties for innovators (see Gallini, 2002, for a review). When innovators must negotiate with large numbers of patentholders, they may face excessive transaction costs (Heller and Eisenberg, 1998), "holdup," and problems of vertical monopoly (Shapiro, 2001).},

tags={Private Mechanisms, Cross-licensing, Pools, Firm Strategy, Blocking Patents, Sequential Innovation},

}

thicket_def_extract={Thus a patent thicket usually involves (1) multiple patents on (2) the same, similar, or complementary technologies, (3) held by different parties, making it difficult to negotiate intellectual property rights (for example, licensing agreements) to the point where some scholars feel it might be socially inefficient.... What is a patent thicket? A patent thicket conjures up the image of a thicket, or bramble, a large dense bush with thorns on the branches making it difficult to pass through without getting severely scratched. Thus a patent thicket is a “a dense web of overlapping intellectual property rights that a company must hack its way through in order to actually commercialize new technology” (Shapiro, 2001, p. 120). This makes it difficult to negotiate intellectual property rights (for example, licensing agreements1), to the point where some observers feel it might be socially inefficient (Bessen & Meurer, 2008b; Scotchmer, 1996). In such a situation, it is argued that strategic uses of the patent system by applicants may be interfering with one of the goals of the system, by obliging innovators to spend inordinate resources on transaction costs to bring new technology that builds on prior work to market. Such high transaction costs, if and when they exist, would tend to discourage innovation rather than encourage it.},

tags={},

}

thicket_def_extract={In particular, Shapiro (2001) has argued that a "patent thicket" has appeared that renders it difficult to commercialize a new technology. In some industries the number of intellectual property rights a firm requires to produce a new product is so large, and their ownership is so dispersed, that it is quite easy to unintentionally infringe on a patent. In this environment there is, therefore, a hold-up problem: when the manufacturer starts selling its product a patentee might show up threatening to shut production down unless it is paid high royalties.},

tags={Private Mechanisms, Cross-licensing, Litigation},

}

thicket_def_extract={In the field of biomedical research an early paper by Heller and Eisenberg (1998) raised serious questions regarding the effects of patenting on research productivity in this field, especially at the level of basic scientific research. they argue that patent thickets in biomedical research would make it difficult or impossible for researchers to access basic research tools. By implication research progress in these industries would be stifled. More recent work by Walsh, Arora and Cohen (2002) and Walsh, Cho and Cohen (2005) does not show that these concerns are generally valid. In the field of nanotechnology Lemley (2005) has documented that firms and universi ties are patenting at an unprecedented pace for such a new technology. He points out that this is the first new technology to emerge in which basic scientific building blocks are being patented... What unifies all of this work is its focus on patenting in technologies in which a product is based on a large number of patents, i.e., industries in which products are complex. These patents are valuable only as a set of complementary patent rights. Thus, assumption (iv) 37 of the traditional view of patents is violated. Shapiro (2001) argues that firms in industries based on such complex technologies face a growing “patent thicket”: a dense web of overlapping patents in which a firm is often faced by rivals that hold patents which may block the use of its own patents... In such cases the various patents embodied in the product become “technological complements”. Technological complementarity is one cause for overlapping patents and for the existence of blocking patents. Thus it is one precondition for the emergence of patent thickets and for the amassing of patent portfolios... It may be that the firms involved are attempting to reduce transactions costs that arise within a patent thicket.},

tags={Complements, Substitutes, Fences, Strategic Patenting},

}

thicket_def_extract={In an anticommons, by my definition, multiple owners are each endowed with the right to exclude others from a scarce resource, and no one has an effective privilege of use. 11 When there are too many owners holding rights of exclusion, the resource is prone to underuse - a tragedy of the anticommons.12 Legal and economic scholars have mostly overlooked this tragedy, but...},

tags={Seminal Theory!},

}

thicket_def_extract={Most famously, Lassig argues that the proliferation of software patents has created an "anticommons" or a patent thicket... so many overlapping patents in the industry that potential innovators cannot readily obtain the approvals necessary to conduct their research. The premise of the model is that assiets will go unused because of the costs of obtaining the permissions necessary to use them.},

tags={Software, Survey, No Thickets!, No Search},

}

thicket_def_extract={This Article is aimed at providing conceptual guidance for those who need to traverse the new thicket of intellectual property rights (IPRs).' Each vine, each plant, standing in one's path represents a distinct IPR owned by an individual. To pass through, one needs a license from each owner. Where a single right blocks the path, this is easy: a single licensing contract does the trick. Today, however, business people more often than not encounter a tangled, twisted mass of IPRs, which criss-cross the established walkways of commerce. Progress along this path does not come cheaply; rather, it requires numerous contracts with multiple, independent right holders},

tags={Seminal Theory!, First Thicket Metaphor, Copyright, Patents},

}

thicket_def_extract={Multivariate analysis of the data suggests that in selected discrete technologies, patent ‘fences’ may serve to exclude competitors whereas in complex technologies, ‘thickets’ represent exchange forums for complementary technology.... yielding thickets of complementary patents held by different owners.... Patent thickets owned by various patent holders should prevail in complex technologies such as semiconductors, forcing players to use patents as ‘bargaining chips’.4 Here, from the patentee’s standpoint, exchanging technology should be the first-best use for a patent leading to the highest possible profits as exclusion is virtually infeasible.... As both articles show, the “strategic use” of patents (the two most important types being blocking and cross-licensing with patent ‘thickets’ playing a major role for the latter), has classically been discussed from the perspective of those patent holders who either engage in the production of their own technological goods or consider themselves professional intellectual property suppliers who repeatedly interact with manufacturers.},

tags={Private Mechanisms, NPEs, Firm Strategy, Defensive/Offensive Patenting, Value from Position/Portfolio},

}