Abstract: This paper considers a network product oligopolistic market made up of an incumbent licensor and a number of enterprises,and analyzes the optimal number of licenses in fixed-fee licensing by the incumbent when the products are of network effects.We show that whether to license and to sole-licensing or multi-licensing depend on intensity of network effect,market capacity,market concentration and R &D efficiency.When the market is rather small,the incumbent will be a monopolist.When the market is large sufficiently,it's always optimal to license.If the intensity of network is very small,no matter how the market concentration,multi-licensing dominates sole-licen sing.If the intensity of network is moderate,the incumbent licensor will license all the enterprises in the market.If the intensity of network is rather large,when the market concentration is relatively large,it is superior to multi-licensing than sole-licensing;when the market concentration is small,then whether to sole-licensing or multi-licensing depends on the number of licenses.Meanwhile,when the incumbent licensor can't make price discrimination,the optimal fixed fee reduces as the overall R&D efficiency by licensees and the number of licenses by licensor increases.

Key words: network effect, oligopolistic market, market co ncentration, fixed-fee, market capacity, R &D efficiency