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Wiley InterScience | |||||||||||
  American Journal of Agricultural EconomicsVolume 90 Issue 1, Pages 133 - 151 Published Online: 9 Aug 2007 © 2009 Agricultural and Applied Economics Association
Abstract | References | Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 149K) | Related Articles | Citation Tracking 
The Role of Patent Rights in Mergers: Consolidation in Plant Biotechnology
The authors would like to thank conference participants the 11th Annual WZB Conference on Industrial Organization and the 3rd Annual International Industrial Organization Conference for helpful comments. We would also like to thank the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for financial support. Copyright 2008 American Agricultural Economics Association KEYWORDS hazard estimation • mergers and acquisitions • mutually blocking patents • patent enforceability • patent rights • plant biotechnology ABSTRACTFew empirical studies have addressed the impact of the patent system on industry structure. Using firm-level patent data for firms in plant biotechnology, we develop a measure of patent enforceability. Duration models show that patent statistics are useful predictors of the timing of consolidation and that patent enforceability is an important factor influencing the likelihood of consolidation. Acquisitions in plant biotechnology may be motivated by the enforcement of patent rights when firms have overlapping technologies; some merger activity may be explained by attempts to avoid mutually blocking technology, as exemplified by the case of Roundup Ready corn.
[Received September 2005; | 
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