ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that an intellectual property right which generates a 'stable', distinct relevant product market, an IPR-based monopoly, might be classified as an essential facility. It summarizes the problem of the right incentive to invest in institutional contexts characterized by uncertainty, bounded rationality, asset specificity and contract incompleteness. The chapter analyses the economics of essential facility and then turn on the comparison of the ex ante legal protection of information goods and the ex post efficiency of introducing competition in former monopolized markets, emphasizing the Schumpeterian trade-off between static and dynamic efficiency. It examines the rational for imposing obligations to allow access over an essential facility when intellectual property rights are involved and the problem of determining an appropriate price for access. The essential facility doctrine has tried to give a specific answer to the governance of assets which are indispensable for entering downstream markets and are controlled by an integrated monopolistic owner.
