We currently have no framework that allows us to really understand how a political system works, and how property rights and patent systems evolved, and so we do not have a body of theory that allows us to make predictive statements that would in fact [...]
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A Recommendation on How to Intelligently Approach Emerging Problems in Intellectual Property SystemsMost would agree that a sound patent system is one in which the social benefits of the system exceed the social costs. Many would also agree that the current patent system imposes significant social costs, and that the current proposed patent reform [...] In an earlier comment on Boldrin and Levine’s 2003 lecture on patents and their effect on technology, we observed that their account of James Watt’s influence on the progress of steam technology contained factual errors which tended to [...] The two sides of the contemporary debate over intellectual property agree that the law needs to “strike a balanceâ€� between providing sufficient incentive for creation and the freedom to make use of existing ideas. Michele Boldrin and [...] An increasing number of scholarly voices challenge the balance between incentives and deadweight losses created by intellectual property rights. In their book Against Intellectual Monopoly (2008), Boldrin and Levine) move beyond pragmatic calls to [...] How should the economic performance of property systems be evaluated? Benefit-cost analysis is widely used to evaluate non-market based regulation when prices are not available. Market prices provide better information for property systems, but market [...] In a 2008 paper, Michele Boldrin and David Levine offer a strong attack on intellectual property. While Boldrin and Levine make a plausible case, it is an exaggeration to say as they do that patents and copyrights are intellectual monopolies and are [...] In this paper, we begin our analysis of copyrights and patents by asking: why should creators have the right to control how purchasers make use of an idea or new good? This gives creators a monopoly over the idea. We refer to this right as [...] Introduction to the special issue on the Kauffman Foundation Conference on Intellectual Property and Innovation, held at St. Louis (USA) on April 2-3, 2009. This conference was organized by the Center on Law, Innovation and Economic Growth of the [...] In the past decade, anti-money laundering policy has switched both in the US and in Europe from a rule- to a risk-based reporting system in order to avoid over-reporting by the private sector. However, reporting instead increased in most countries, while the quality of information decreased. Governments were drowned in data because private agents feared sanctions for not reporting. However, unlike in other countries, this âcrying wolf problemâ (Takats, 2007) did not happen in the Netherlands, where the number of reports diminished, but information quality improved. The reasons for this can be found in differences in legal institutions and legal culture, notably the contrast between US adversarial legalism and Dutch cooperative informalism. The established legal systems also provide for resistance to change. Thus, lowering sanctions in order to reduce over-reporting may not be a realistic option in a legal system which traditionally uses deterrence by fierce criminal and private legal sanctions. Furthermore, a risk-based approach may not be sustainable in the long run, as litigation may eventually replace a risk-based approach again by a rule-based one, now with precise rules set by the [...] |
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