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Cited by 722

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 45 of the 45 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Sequential innovation, patents, and imitation

Bessen, James, Maskin, Eric·2009·The RAND Journal of Economics
DOI 10.1111/j.1756-2171.2009.00081.x
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Abstract

We argue that when innovation is “sequential” (so that each successive invention builds in an essential way on its predecessors) and “complementary” (so that each potential innovator takes a different research line), patent protection is not as useful for encouraging innovation as in a static setting. Indeed, society and even inventors themselves may be better off without such protection. Furthermore, an inventor's prospective profit may actually be enhanced by competition and imitation. Our sequential model of innovation appears to explain evidence from a natural experiment in the software industry.

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Crossref · 10.1111/j.1756-2171.2009.00081.x

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Metadata

Authors
Bessen, J., & Maskin, E.
Venue
The RAND Journal of Economics
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2009-10-12
Volume
40
Issue
4
Pages
611-635
ISSN
  • 0741-6261 (ISSN-L)
  • 1756-2171
DOI
10.1111/j.1756-2171.2009.00081.x
OpenAlex
W3125658338
Cited by
722
References
45
FWCI
84.79
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Sequential innovation, patents, and imitation. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/j.1756-2171.2009.00081.x
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Bessen, J., & Maskin, E. (2009). Sequential innovation, patents, and imitation. The RAND Journal of Economics. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-2171.2009.00081.x

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.