PATENT POOLS AND CROSS‐LICENSING IN THE SHADOW OF PATENT LITIGATION*
分析了在专利有效性和范围不确定导致纠纷不可避免的情况下，企业形成专利池或进行交叉许可的动机，并比较了私人诉讼激励与社会激励，发现专利池可能庇护无效专利免受挑战，对反垄断政策有启示。
This article develops a framework to analyze the incentives to form a patent pool or engage in cross‐licensing arrangements in the presence of uncertainty about the validity and coverage of patents that makes disputes inevitable. It analyzes the private incentives to litigate and compares them with the social incentives. It shows that pooling arrangements can have the effect of sheltering invalid patents from challenges. This result has an antitrust implication that patent pools should not be permitted until after patentees have challenged the validity of each other's patents if litigation costs are not too large.