Litigate or let it go? Multi-market contact and IP infringement-litigation dynamics
研究多市场接触如何影响企业间的知识产权侵权与诉讼动态，发现企业扮演创新者或模仿者角色会引发不同的竞争行为，对生物制药行业813个专利侵权案例的分析支持了预测。
We explore how multimarket contact (MMC) explains competitors' intellectual property (IP) infringement-litigation dynamics. We build on role congruity theory to propose that the role played by each firm in shared markets generates expectations about their behavior, determining which of the following dynamics arise: mutual forbearance (low probability of IP infringement and high probability of litigation) or mimetic behavior (high probability of IP infringement and low probability of litigation). We look into two possible roles, imitators and innovators, and claim that (1) mutual forbearance dynamics are more likely to arise when firms play the role of innovators, whereas (2) mimetic behavior dynamics are more likely to arise when firms play the role of imitators. We find support for our predictions in a sample of 813 patent infringement cases in the biopharmaceutical industry. Increasing MMC from one standard deviation below the mean to one standard deviation above the mean leads to a 21.6 (20.6) percent decrease in the probability of infringement and a 22.7 (65.1) percent increase in the probability of litigation after infringement when the rival (focal firm) plays the role of an innovator in shared markets. Alternatively, this increase in MMC leads to a 14.3 % increase (no increase) in the probability of infringement and a 5.2 (16.4) percent decrease in the probability of litigation when the rival (focal firm) plays the role of an imitator in shared markets.