The tragedy of the anticommons -- Welcome to the lexicon -- Where are the cures? -- You can't hear me now -- Block parties, fan teams and banana republics -- Empty Moscow storefronts -- The world is mine oyster -- A solutions toolkit

Twenty-five new runways would eliminate most air travel delays in America; fifty patent owners are blocking a major drug company from creating a cancer cure; 90 percent of our broadcast spectrum sits idle while American cell phone service suffers. These problems have solutions that can jump-start...

The "tragedy of the commons" metaphor helps explain why people overuse shared resources. However, the recent proliferation of intellectual property rights in biomedical research suggests a different tragedy, an "anticommons" in which people underuse scarce resources because too many owners can...