Scherer’s study focused on antitrus

Scherer’s study focused on antitrust licensing decrees. These decrees
mandated compulsory licensing as part of case settlements. The
majority of these licenses did not require future licensing of patents issuing
from the year studied, but covered past inventions. Although
Scherer hypothesized that specific past experience with compulsory licenses
or the general threat of licenses might produce an adverse impact
on R&D behavior, he found no statistical results to support these hypotheses.
In the short-term, the largely unpredictable licenses studied did not
appear to impact behavior in the year studied. The view that firms focused
on the long-term was expressed in an earlier study conducted by Scherer
that focused on companies that either had been or were on the verge of
being forced to license patents in the antitrust context. The most common
explanation provided by the firms for not changing R&D was their
long-term interest in the impacted business, and the view that they needed
to continue R&D in order to stay competitive.