This chapter provides a comprehensive survey of the burgeoning literature on the law and economics of intellectual property. It is organized around the two principal objectives of intellectual property law: promoting innovation and aesthetic creativity (focusing on patent, trade secret, and...

The economic and social roles of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) are among the most puzzling mysteries of the current literature. The British Industrial Revolution initiate the era of a sustained economic growth all over the word and established institutions that have important effects even...

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...

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...

This paper utilizes a data set of over 208,000 U.S. patents applied for between 1975 and 2010 to study development of strategic patenting over time and across industries. With received citations as a measure of patent social value, we use data envelopment analysis to estimate firm-level relative...

Concerns have been raised that the upsurge of 3D printing technology would disrupt the patent system. The central question the present paper aims to address is whether and to what extent the emergence of 3D printing technology indeed urges us to rethink patent law. The paper splits up this...

Open innovation is the subject of increased scholarly debate. A lot of attention has thereby been paid to firm-centered open innovation, characterized by a for-profit motive and the interplay between patents and contracts, resulting in restricted openness. Inspired by the increasing call for...

Since 1950, Congress has limited the scope of the activities in which a nonprofit entity could participate, in part due to a controversy over a pasta company donated to the NYU School of Law by a couple of wealthy alumni. The pasta profits helped the school refurbish and expand, but competing...

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...