This article considers current proposals for patent law reform in light of a simple theory about intellectual property law: In a world without transaction costs, the assignment of property rights is not necessary to stimulate the optimal production of creative goods. Because potential users of...

Economists and policymakers have recently defended the extension of copyright protection to assure the efficient exploitation of existing works. They assert that works in the public domain may be under-exploited due to the lack of property rights or over-exploited due to congestion...

Contrary to popular belief, the twentieth century was a good one for commercial apple varietal diversity. As measured by availability in commercial nursery catalogs, significant gains were made in both absolute number of apple varieties and the available number of pre-1900 historic varieties. In...

The intellectual property system does not seem to drive the rate of innovation in the market for vegetable varieties. Drawing on a unique data set of all plant patents, plant variety protection certificates, and utility patents among 42 vegetable varieties, this short paper examines the...

According to the conventional wisdom, the twentieth century was a disaster of monumental proportions for vegetable crop diversity. The conventional wisdom is wrong. Our study of 2004 commercial seed catalogs shows twice as many 1903 crop varieties surviving as previously reported in the iconic...

In a world of zero transaction costs, one should observe optimal invention and innovation. As long as a system of enforceable contracts were in place, firms with inventive capacity and firms requiring inventions would negotiate for the optimal production of new creations. With adequate...

Some economists assert that as valuable works transition from copyrighted status and fall into the public domain they will be underexploited and their value dissipated. Others insist instead that without an owner to control their use, valuable public domain works will be overexploited or...

This Article uses the particular experience of a choir director and visual comparisons of public domain and “copyrighted” works to inquire into the standard that governs the copyrightability of musical arrangements and, at the same time, to strengthen the voice of the public domain

A random sample of new books for sale on Amazon.com shows more books for sale from the 1880’s than the 1980’s. Why? This paper presents new data on how copyright stifles the reappearance of works. First, a random sample of more than 2000 new books for sale on Amazon.com is analyzed along...

Induced by favorable trade concessions, developing countries seem to be willing to incur some of the costs of enacting and enforcing the new laws necessary to comply with the TRIPS Agreement. The United States and other industrialized nations insist compliance is a small sacrifice. They assert...