Center of Industrial Economics (Cerna), Ecole Nationale Supérieure desmines de Paris (France)

Cerna recently launched a 5 years research programme on “Patent reformsin Europe” with the sponsorship of international companies. It aims atcontributing to a better understanding of the economic aspects of patentreforms in Europe. It will carry out and disseminate academic researchto document the debates on intellectual property (e.g., software patent,Community patent).

4 topics will be addressed:

• The political economy of patent reforms. The research will use thetools of Political Economy to study the processes that have led to thefailure of several patent reforms in Europe. The research aims atidentifying the different categories of stakeholders and theirrespective costs and benefits in the reform process, and to evaluatewhether there is room for new reforms
• The innovative and pro-competitive effects of horizontal licensing.The research will focus on the economic effects of licensing agreementsbetween competitors. Such agreements include principally bilateralcross-licensing agreements and patent pools backing industry standards.They are especially frequent in Information and Communicationindustries, where they facilitate the circulation of research outcomesat the industry level. Besides their static impact on market prices, itis of prime importance to understand how they affect the dynamics ofinnovation.
• The interactions between open source software and proprietary systems.The research will investigate why companies participate in thedevelopment of open source software (as a matter of fact, the maincontributors to major open source software are now paid by privatecompanies.), how the use of open source software for business purposecan affect competition, and to what extent the legal institutionssupporting open source software are compatible with business activities.
• The protection of technologies that protect contents. This topicaddresses the problem of Digital Right Management technologies (DRM) inthe content industries. Such technologies allow the secure distributionof digital copyrighted content (music, video) to consumers who agree topay for it. Their emergence may be impeded by competition betweentechnology providers. Our purpose is to study how the protection of DRMtechnologies by patents does influence the emergence of standards in theindustry.

Cerna wants to recruit two PhD students who will join the facultyinvolved in the research programme. The proposed scholarship isapproximately 1400 € monthly. PhD scholarship in Industrial Economics

Contact: François Lévêque
leveque @ cerna.ensmp.fr