Our 19th Century Patent System
One’s view of the patent system depends on what perspective is taken. A narrow focus on the operational level of doctrinal implementation of patent law reveals significant instability and fluctuation [...]
Patents, Meet Napster: 3D Printing and the Digitization of Things
Digitization has reached things. This shift promises to alter the business and legal landscape for a range of industries. Digitization has already disrupted copyright-based industries and laws. As cost barriers [...]
Strategic Use of Patents: Implications for Antitrust
In this paper, we offer an economic perspective on one aspect of the IP-antitrust nexus – the ability of firms to use their IP portfolios to compete with rivals. We [...]
How Do Patents Affect Research Investments?
While patent systems have been widely used both historically and internationally, there is nonetheless a tremendous amount of controversy over whether patent systems – in practice – improve the alignment [...]
Indefinitely Renewable Copyright
In this paper we raise questions concerning the widely accepted proposition that economic efficiency requires that copyright protection be limited in its duration (often shorter than the current term). We [...]
Identifying Industry Margins with Price Constraints: Structural Estimation on Pharmaceuticals
We develop a structural model to investigate the effects of pharmaceutical price regulation on demand and on manufacturers' price-setting behavior in France. We estimate price-cost margins in a regulated market [...]
Modernizing International Agreements to Combat Copyright Infringement
Intellectual property is a critical driver of economic prosperity. But there is a serious problem that our government needs to address to enhance the protection of IP and, thereby, to [...]
Measuring Technological Innovation over the Long Run
We use textual analysis of high-dimensional data from patent documents to create new indicators of technological innovation. We identify significant patents based on textual similarity of a given patent to [...]
Patents and Cumulative Innovation: Causal Evidence from the Courts
Cumulative innovation is central to economic growth. Do patent rights facilitate or impede follow-on innovation? We study the causal effect of removing patent rights by court invalidation on subsequent research [...]
Statutes, Common-Law Rights, and the Mistaken Classification of Patents as Public Rights
Patents are increasingly swept up into the operations of agencies in the modern administrative state. This has raised anew the fundamental question whether patents are private property rights or special [...]