竞争政策与跨国最优技术授权策略

Competition Policy and the Optimal Licensing Strategy of Foreign Innovators

本文探讨当前中国在知识产权领域实施(宽松)竞争政策的理论基础。基于本国国有企业和私营企业与具有成本优势的外国企业进行古诺竞争的寡头模型,分析生产型外国企业如何将降低成本的专利技术分别授权给本国的两家企业。我们的研究表明:当不能歧视性授权时,外国企业总是偏好特许权收费方式;当能够歧视性授权时,外国企业在技术创新程度较大时会偏好固定收费方式。由于在歧视性授权下,外国企业将更多的利润转移到母国,因此本国福利在不允许歧视性授权下更高,但全球福利却相反。因此,本国政府从本国福利极大化的角度往往会强化竞争政策,限制歧视性授权;尽管从全球角度看,不限制歧视性授权的宽松竞争政策能够提升全球福利。

Empirical evidence shows that competition policy plays an important role in adjusting the economic structure,enhancing efficiency and promoting economic growth.Since the enactment of the Anti-Monopoly Law of China in 2008,the number of patents granted by foreign enterprises in China has continued to increase.However,patent licensing is accompanied by severe anti-competition issues.For example,in 2015,the National Development and Reform Commission of China fined Qualcomm RMB6.08 billion for abusive patent licensing practices and imposed several corrective measures on the company.This paper focuses on how competition policy affects firms licensing strategies among foreign innovators in particular and how the policy ultimately impacts both domestic and global welfare.We expect to shed light on the theoretical foundation of the recent lenient competition policy in China.To capture the features of China s mixed economy,we follow the literature on mixed oligopoly,in which a domestic welfare-maximizing public firm,a domestic private firm and a foreign private firm compete in a Cournot-Nash quantity game in a single market.Each private firm maximizes its own profit,and the profit of the foreign firms is shifted out of the domestic country.We assume that the foreign firm creates a process innovation that reduces its production cost.The foreign firm decides whether to retain the cost advantage(no license)or to license to its rivals by means of a single fixed fee or a per-unit royalty,comparing the cost advantage and the licensing revenue.Our paper makes three contributions to the recent work.First,the previous licensing literature routinely focuses on a domestic market,but this paper explores cross-national licensing by a foreign firm.Second,we adopt a mixed oligopoly model containing both public and private firms,which captures the features of China s mixed economy.Third,we consider price discrimination in licensing fees and its impacts on both domestic and global welfare.Our findings show that competition policy and the size of innovation affect foreign firms licensing decisions.If a government implements a strict competition policy that does not allow discriminatory licensing fees,the foreign innovator will adopt licensing by means of royalties.Optimal licensing with royalties is associated with an equal royalty rate for both licensees(equal to the maximum cost reduction),whereas optimal licensing by fixed fee requires discriminatory fees,whereby the public firm is willing to pay a much larger fixed fee than is a domestic private firm.However,if the competition policy is lenient,allowing for discriminatory licensing fees,the foreign innovator is able to extract higher rent from patent licensing with fixed fees.The fixed fee does not increase the marginal cost of production and thus does not reduce the level of total output,resulting in higher production and licensing revenue.In addition,the foreign innovator s preference for licensing by a fixed fee becomes stronger as the innovation size becomes larger.Furthermore,competition policy has opposite impacts on domestic welfare and global welfare.Discriminatory licensing fees increase the foreign innovator s profit,which is shifted out of the domestic country and reduces domestic welfare;however,discriminatory fees encourage licensing by fixed fee and improve production efficiency and global welfare.Therefore,there may be intrinsic inconsistency between the objectives of domestic welfare maximization and global welfare maximization in cross-national licensing.The policy implication is that it is necessary to better understand cross-border licensing practices and to contribute to the development of competition policies that target discriminatory licensing fees.Thus,if a government permits discrimination in patent licensing fees,such an easing of policy may not be driven by national interests,but could be the result of altruistic considerations of global interests.In fact,China has recently adopted a lenient competition policy,and there has been little antitrust enforcement against firms for discriminatory licensing fees.We believe that in addition to the high enforcement cost,a lenient competition policy is probably caused by social efficiency and global welfare considerations,enabling China to better conform to the new international rules of competition neutrality and thus to become actively and deeply integrated into the global economy.