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→Network Effects
The value of a technology depends on its adoption. A patent pool may aid adoption by allowing developers access to all needed complementary technologies and by assuring consumers that the technology is here to stay (particulary when a pool is linked to a standard). As such a firm may earn higher total rents from including a patent in a pool, even if its marginal rents from each unit are lower.
Furthermore, a firm may gain more rents from the sale of a product that uses a patent than from licensing revenues from the patent itself. With complex products (requiring many diversely-held patents), a patent holder may be better off promoting adoption in order to secure upstream/downstream rents.
===Substitution Protection===
