This Week in Intellectual Property, April 16th
Rent Check Elizabeth Warren has proposed a national right to repair law for farm equipment. The New York Times editorial board argues this should be expanded to cover all third-party [...]
Protecting the Right to Repair Your iPhone
While many on the left, most notably Elizabeth Warren, are pushing for a revival of antitrust, here’s one specific policy that could rein in tech giants and has momentum for [...]
This Week in Intellectual Property, April 9th
Rent Check A recent essay for the National Bureau of Economic Research explains how some innovations may not come about, either due to regulations that lead to lag times for [...]
What Hinders Innovation?
In an essay for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Heidi Williams discusses her previous research on how current IP policy fails to promote (or actively hinders) innovation. First, she [...]
This Week in Intellectual Property, April 2nd
Rent Check A new paper finds mixed effects from non-practicing entities, also called "patent trolls." While they are able to serve as middlemen for firms with IP that they likely [...]
It’s Not All Bad: “Patent Trolls” and Innovation
Almost nothing in the world is in every way, shape, and form, bad. (Even The Phantom Menace gave us this glorious review from “Mr. Plinkett.”) A new NBER paper identifies [...]
Intellectual Property in the New Technological Age: 2017 – Chapters 1 and 2
"The 2017 Edition reflects the following principal developments: Trade Secrets: Congress passed the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016, one of the most momentous changes in the history of trade [...]
The Patent Troll: Benign Middleman or Stick-Up Artist?
How do non-practicing entities ("Patent Trolls") impact innovation and technological progress? Although this question has important implications for industrial policy, little direct evidence about it exists. This paper provides new [...]
This Week in Intellectual Property, March 26th
Rent Check The EU Parliament passed its Directive on Copyright, including the dreaded Articles 11 and 13 (relabeled as 15 and 17). It's unambiguously bad for a free and open [...]
The Sites are Going Out All Over Europe: EU Copyright Directive Passes
Nearly three years after the announcement that the EU would be modernizing its copyright regulations and a year after the dreaded Articles 11 and 13 were initially passed, a revised [...]