机密还是专利?  

Secrecy vs.Patent

作　　者：寇宗来[1] 周敏[1] 

机构地区：[1]复旦大学中国社会主义市场经济研究中心

出　　处：《经济学（季刊）》2011年第4期115-134,共20页China Economic Quarterly

基　　金：教育部基地重点项目(No.2007JJD790120);上海市重点学科建设项目(编号B101);上海市浦江人才计划以及复旦大学“985工程”三期整体推进社会科学研究项目的资助

摘　　要：在传统社会中，为保护创新成果，人们通常只能将其保留为技术机密或他人无法共享的私有知识，这不但降低了创新效率，也会增加技术的失传风险。有识于此，本文将专利看做政府向创新者提供的一种机密交换契约，并借此论证了引入“事后”专利保护的合理性：人们为了要获得排他性的专利保护，就必须将其私有知识公开披露，而这消除了技术失传风险。但只有当专利利润高于商业机密利润时人们才会申请专利，故专利保护会导致更大的垄断扭曲。社会最优专利期限就是在机密失传风险和垄断定价扭曲之间权衡的结果，只要存在技术失传风险，事后最优专利期限就必须是正的。In a traditional society innovations were often held as secrecy, i. e. , private knowledge that can not be shared by others. This approach not only lowers social efficiency, but also leads to the risk of technology oblivion. Based on this observation, we offer a novel justification of ＂ex post＂ patent protection. In order to obtain exclusive patent protection, innovators have to disclose their technological knowledge to the public. This approach eliminates oblivion risks. However, patent protection may lead to more deadweight loss because an innovator would not apply a patent unless the profit from doing that is higher, i. e. , unless the patent duration is longer than the expected duration of the secrecy. The optimal patent policy in our model, therefore, results from the tradeoff between oblivion risk and monopoly distortion. The optimal patent protection should be positive as long as oblivion risk exists. We also discuss how some parameters affect the optimal patent policy.

关 键 词：机密 专利 泄密 失传 

分 类 号：F273.1[经济管理—企业管理]