Vassar College Digital Library

Vassar Scholarship

Vassar Scholarship, the institutional repository formerly known as Digital Window, reflects the research and scholarly output of the Vassar College community.  It provides access to a variety of collections, including senior theses and projects across a wide range of disciplines.

Bargaining in the shadow of precedent: the surprising irrelevance of asymmetric stakes

Publication Date
2006-April-12
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

We develop a model of bargaining and litigation in the context of patent licensing (or any contractual setting). Following Priest and Klein (1984) we developed a model that explicitly allows for (1) multiple parties (leading to asymmetry of stakes), (2)...

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Coalition Power in Epistemic Transition Systems

Publication Date
2017-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

The paper proposes a bimodal logic that describes an interplay between coalition strategies and distributed knowledge. Unlike the existing literature, the paper assumes that a strategy must be not only executable but also verifiable. That is, the strategy of a...

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Credibility and credulity: how beliefs about beliefs affect entry incentives

Publication Date
2006-November-13
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

In this note we investigate the infringement (entry) decision for a firm facing an incumbent patent holder with uncertain patent rights. The entrant risks a dispute by entering, resulting in either a settlement (licensing) or litigation and trial. Using the...

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Everyone knows that someone knows: quantifiers over epistemic agents

Publication Date
2018-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Modal logic S5 is commonly viewed as an epistemic logic that captures the most basic properties of knowledge. Kripke proved a completeness theorem for the first-order modal logic S5 with respect to a possible worlds semantics. A multiagent version of...

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Information Flow under Budget Constraints

Publication Date
2018-February-26
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Although first proposed in the database theory as properties of functional dependencies between attributes, Armstrong's axioms capture general principles of information flow by describing properties of dependencies between sets of pieces of information. This article generalizes Armstrong's axioms to a...

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Kelo, Cuno, and the broken window

Publication Date
2006-November-26
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

In June 2005, the Supreme Court made one of its least popular decisions in recent history. In Kelo v. New London, the Court missed a simple point: that local decision makers make local decisions.

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Learning by suing: structural estimates of court errors in patent litigation

Publication Date
2006-November-07
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

This paper presents structural estimates of the probability of validity, and the probability of Type I and Type II errors by courts in patent litigation. Patents are modeled as uncertain property rights, and implications of the model are tested using...

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Patent protection, creative destruction, and generic entry in pharmaceuticals: evidence from patent and pricing data

Publication Date
2005-October-28
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
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Abstract

This paper merges patent citation data with data on pharmaceutical patent expirations, generic entry, and pricing to explore the effects of observable patent characteristics on off-patent and on-patnet pharmaceutical pricing. Using a sample of drug patents facing generic entry in...

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Second-Order Know-How Strategies

Publication Date
2018-July-10
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

The fact that a coalition has a strategy does not mean that the coalition knows what the strategy is. If the coalition knows the strategy, then such a strategy is called a know-how strategy of the coalition. The paper proposes...

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Strategic Coalitions with Perfect Recall

Publication Date
2018-February-02
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

The paper proposes a bimodal logic that describes an interplay between distributed knowledge modality and coalition know-how modality. Unlike other similar systems, the one proposed here assumes perfect recall by all agents. Perfect recall is captured in the system by...

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The dynamics of patent citations

Publication Date
2006-July-03
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

The use of patent citations as a measure of patent "quality" increased dramatically in recent years. I estimate the hazard of patent citation, and find evidence of unobserved heterogeneity. Hazard estimation provides a means to separate patent quality from citation...

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The option value of patent litigation: Theory and evidence

Publication Date
2003-December-01
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

In this paper I present a real options model of patent litigation when patents are not perfectly enforceable. I consider both finite horizon and infinite horizon models. The theoretical results demonstrate that patent value depends not only on the underlying...

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The value of certainty in intellectual property rights: stock market reactions to patent litigation

Publication Date
2005-November-15
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Using a sample of patents litigated between 1977 and 1997, I estimate stock market reactions to patent litigation decisions and to patent grants. I find that the resolution of uncertainty over validity and infringement is worth as much to the...

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Together We Know How to Achieve: An Epistemic Logic of Know-How

Publication Date
2017-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

The existence of a coalition strategy to achieve a goal does not necessarily mean that the coalition has enough information to know how to follow the strategy. Neither does it mean that the coalition knows that such a strategy exists...

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