About the Speaker:


Dr Poddar is an Associate Professor at Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea. Previously he was with the National University of Singapore. His area of specialization is Microeconomics, Industrial Organization, Applied Game Theory, Patent Licensing, and the Economics of Digital Piracy. His work has been published in the European Journal of Political Economy, the International Journal of Industrial Organization, Economics Letters, Economic Record, and many others.

Abstract:

In this paper, we address the issue of illegal copying or counterfeiting of the original product and Intellectual Property Right (IPR) protections. The original product developer makes costly investment to deter piracy in a given regime of IPR protection. In the presence of a commercial pirate, we find that it is profitable for the original producer to accommodate the pirate when there is weak IPR protection, and deter when the IPR protection is strong. However, in the comparative statics analysis, we find that there is a non-monotonic relationship between the optimal level of deterrence (chosen by the original producer) and the degree of IPR protection in the economy. The relationship between the rate of piracy and IPR protection is found to be monotonically decreasing whereas the relationship between the rate of piracy and the quality of the pirated product turns out to be non-monotonic.

Reservation:

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