Licensing Complementary Patents: “Patent Trolls”, Market Structure, and “Excessive” Royalties

The infamous Blackberry case brought new attention to so-called “patent trolls” and began the general association of trolls with “non-practicing” patent holders. This has had important legal consequences: Namely, patent holders have been denied injunctive relief because they did not practice the patents themselves. In this paper we analyze how patent holders –– both non-practicing and vertically integrated –– choose their royalties depending on the structure of the upstream and downstream markets and the types of licensing agreements available. We show that a vertically integrated firm has an incentive to raise its rivals’ costs and to restrict entry on the downstream market; incentives that do not hold for non-integrated patent holders. An automatic presumption that a non-integrated patent holder will charge higher royalties than a vertically integrated company is therefore unfounded. Whether a company charges “excessive” royalties depends on whether there is scope for hold-up, either because of sunk investments on the part of potential licensees or because of “weak” patents held by the licensor. These factors are orthogonal to whether patent holders are practicing or no

The Spectrum of Softly Broken N=1 Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theory

We study the spectrum of the softly broken generalized Veneziano-Yankielowicz effective action for N=1 SUSY Yang-Mills theory. Two dual formulations of the effective action are given. The spurion method is used for the soft SUSY breaking. Masses of the bound states are calculated and mixing patterns are discussed. Mass splittings of pure gluonic states are consistent with predictions of conventional Yang-Mills theory. The results can be tested in lattice simulations of the SUSY Yang-Mills model.Comment: 17 pages, LaTex file, 1 ps figur

Scattering from a Domain Wall in a Spontaneously Broken Gauge Theory

We study the interaction of particles with a domain wall at a symmetry-breaking phase transition by perturbing about the domain wall solution. We find the particulate excitations appropriate near the domain wall and relate them to the particles present far from the wall in the uniform broken and unbroken phases. For a quartic Higgs potential we find analytic solutions to the equations of motion and derive reflection and transmission coefficients. We discover several bound states for particles near the wall. Finally, we apply our results to the electroweak phase transition in the standard model.Comment: 48 pages, 10 figures, LaTeX / epsf, revised to include references to earlier related wor

Detecting Gluino-Containing Hadrons

When SUSY breaking produces only dimension-2 operators, gluino and photino masses are of order 1 GeV or less. The gluon-gluino bound state has mass 1.3-2.2 GeV and lifetime > 10^{-5} - 10^{-10} s. This range of mass and lifetime is largely unconstrained because missing energy and beam dump techniques are ineffective. With only small modifications, upcoming K^0 decay experiments can study most of the interesting range. The lightest gluino-containing baryon (uds-gluino) is long-lived or stable; experiments to find it and the uud-gluino are also discussed.Comment: 13 pp, 1 figure (uuencoded). Descendant of hep-ph/9504295, hep-ph/9508291, and hep-ph/9508292, focused on experimental search techniques. To be published in Phys Rev Let

Connection between a possible fifth force and the direct detection of Dark Matter

If there is a fifth force in the dark sector and dark sector particles interact non-gravitationally with ordinary matter, quantum corrections generically lead to a fifth force in the visible sector. We show how the strong experimental limits on fifth forces in the visible sector constrain the direct detection cross section, and the strength of the fifth force in the dark sector. If the latter is comparable to gravity, the spin-independent direct detection cross section must typically be <~ 10^{-55} cm^2. The anomalous acceleration of ordinary matter falling towards dark matter is also constrained: \eta_{OM-DM} <~ 10^{-8}.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. v3: contains a more detailed treatment of the spin-dependence of the effective interaction between dark matter and ordinary matte

Licensing Complementary Patents: “Patent Trollsâ€, Market Structure, and “Excessive†Royalties

The infamous Blackberry case brought new attention to so-called “patent trolls†and began the general association of trolls with “non-practicing†patent holders. This has had important legal consequences: Namely, patent holders have been denied injunctive relief because they did not practice the patents themselves. In this paper we analyze how patent holders –– both non-practicing and vertically integrated –– choose their royalties depending on the structure of the upstream and downstream markets and the types of licensing agreements available. We show that a vertically integrated firm has an incentive to raise its rivals’ costs and to restrict entry on the downstream market; incentives that do not hold for non-integrated patent holders. An automatic presumption that a non-integrated patent holder will charge higher royalties than a vertically integrated company is therefore unfounded. Whether a company charges “excessive†royalties depends on whether there is scope for hold-up, either because of sunk investments on the part of potential licensees or because of “weak†patents held by the licensor. These factors are orthogonal to whether patent holders are practicing or not

Galactic magnetic deflections and Centaurus A as a UHECR source

We evaluate the validity of leading models of the Galactic magnetic field for predicting UHECR deflections from Cen A. The Jansson-Farrar 2012 GMF model (JF12), which includes striated and random components as well as an out-of-plane contribution to the regular field not considered in other models, gives by far the best fit globally to all-sky data including the WMAP7 22 GHz synchrotron emission maps for Q, U, and I and ~40,000$ extragalactic Rotation Measures (RMs). Here we test the models specifically in the Cen A region, using 160 well-measured RMs and the Polarized Intensity from WMAP, nearby but outside the Cen A radio lobes. The JF12 model predictions are in excellent agreement with the observations, justifying confidence in its predictions for deflections of UHECRs from Cen A. We find that up to six of the 69 Auger events above 55 EeV are consistent with originating in Cen A and being deflected <18 degrees; in this case three are protons and three have Z=2-4. Others of the 13 events within 18 degrees must have another origin. In order for a random extragalactic magnetic field between Cen A and the Milky Way to appreciably alter these conclusions, its strength would have to be > ~ 80 nG -- far larger than normally imagined.Comment: 16 page