Traditionally patents are seen as the gold standard for intellectual property protection. But, in line with empirical findings that secrecy is considered more important for appropriating returns, recent theories predict that firms keep their most important inventions secret. This article...

Moderne Technologien machen es den Nutzern möglich, sehr viel mehr urheberrechtlich geschützte Güter zu kopieren und weiterzugeben, als dies noch vor 50 Jahren der Fall war. Das Urheberrecht kann die Rechteinhaber derzeit nicht effektiv schützen. Es müsste gründlich reformiert werden, um...

Public lawmakers have inadequate and misaligned incentives to engage in legal innovation. Private lawmaking is offered as a potential solution to this problem. However, private lawmaking faces a dilemma: In order to be effective, the cost-reducing standard forms produced by private lawdrafters...

At the start of the Industrial Revolution, patentees created many novel and complex transactions to commercialize their property: they maximized their profits through sophisticated agreements that imposed restrictions on manufacturing, sales, and other uses of their inventions. When these...

Commentators have poured forth a loud and sustained outcry over the past few years that sees property rule treatment of intellectual property (IP) as a cause of excessive transaction costs, thickets, anticommons, hold-ups, hold-outs, and trolls, which unduly tax and retard innovation,...

Competition authorities in foreign jurisdictions have recently adopted or are considering guidelines on applying competition law to intellectual property rights (IPR). A common concern that certain exercises of IPR can restrict competition underlies IPR provisions that would enable competition...

Patent thickets may inefficient retard cumulative innovation. This paper explores two alternative mechanisms that may be used to weed out patent thickets. Both mechanisms are intended to reduce the number of patents in our society. The first mechanism we discuss is price based regulation of...

This paper compares reward systems to intellectual property rights (patents and copyrights). Under a reward system, innovators are paid for innovations directly by government (possibly on the basis of sales), and innovations pass immediately into the public domain. Thus, reward systems engender...

Dozens of people worked together to produce Casablanca. But a single person working alone wrote The Sound and the Fury. While almost all films are produced by large collaborations, no great novel ever resulted from the work of a team. Why does the frequency and success of collaborative creative...

A variety of commentators have called for the increased application of liability rules, including compulsory licenses, to intellectual property. Such arguments are well taken, but unfortunately stop short of advocating the full range of potential intellectual property entitlement allocations....