Copyright Enforcement: Evidence from Two Field Experiments

Hong Luo () and Julie Mortimer
Additional contact information
Hong Luo: Harvard Business School

No 907, Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics

Abstract: Effective dispute resolution is important for reducing private and social costs. We study how resolution responds to changes in price and communication using a new, extensive dataset of copyright infringement incidences by firms. The data cover two field experiments run by a large stock-photography agency. We find that substantially reducing the requested amount generates a small increase in the settlement rate. However, for the same reduced request, a message informing infringers of the price reduction and acknowledging possible unintentionality generates a large increase in settlement; including a deadline further increases the response. The small price effect, compared to the large message effect, can be explained by two countervailing effects of a lower price: an inducement to settle early, but a lower threat of escalation. Furthermore, acknowledging possible unintentionality may encourage settlement due to the typically inadvertent nature of these incidences. The resulting higher settlement rate prevents additional legal action and reduces social costs.

Keywords: copyright; intellectual property; dispute resolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K41 K42 L0 M2 O30 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-02-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Vol 26, Issue 2 (2017): 499-528.

Downloads: (external link)
http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC-P/wp907.pdf main text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Copyright Enforcement: Evidence from Two Field Experiments (2017)
Working Paper: Copyright Enforcement: Evidence from Two Field Experiments (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:boc:bocoec:907

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill MA 02467 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F Baum ().