This paper is an exercise in comparative institutional analysis, asking what kinds of arrangements most facilitate innovation. After identifying pervasive market failures in innovation, it explains why those associated with the Nordic model may be particularly conducive to innovation, and...

Members of a patent pool agree to use a set of patents as if they were jointly owned by all members and license them as a package to other firms. Regulators favor pools as a means to encourage innovation: Pools are expected to reduce litigation risks for their members and lower license fees and...

Release of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Office Action Research Dataset for Patents marks the first time that comprehensive data on examiner-issued rejections are readily available to the research community. An “Office action” is a written notification to the...

Patent scope is one of the important aspects in the debates over “patent quality.” The purported decrease in patent quality over the past decade or two has supposedly led to granting patents of increased breadth (or “overly broad” patents), decreased clarity, and questionable validity....

This report is from a Cambridge Workshop on the openness of large bioresources in synthetic biology and genomics (e.g. the 100,000 Genomes Project), held on 28 January 2016. Research in SB and Gx depends on the use of collections of tissue and data, commonly known as bioresources. Substantial...

The future is now. According to some, we currently face the inevitability of a post-human world, a world where humans enhanced by science far exceed the capabilities of humans unaided by science. Genetic enhancement presents the most familiar way this future may occur. Science fiction films such...

The Internet has devalued content to the point where it is often offered at no charge — newspapers, for instance — or widely misappropriated, as with music and movies. Either way, many people expect much of their content to be free. Why is this, how did it happen, and, focusing on music and...

This Article explores the claiming systems of patent and copyright law. It first develops a two-dimensional taxonomy: claiming can be either peripheral or central and either by characteristic or by exemplar. Patent law has principally adopted a system of peripheral claiming, requiring patentees...

In recent weeks, an increasingly agitated community of music aficionados has been mounting a vocal campaign to save Internet radio. On March 2, 2007, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) announced its decision to increase the rates of the statutory license for sound recordings paid by Internet...