Author(s): Robert P. Merges Year: 2001 Abstract: This Article offers an explanation of the role of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in information-intensive vertical supply relationships. In particular, we explore the connection between stronger property rights and the enhanced viability of independent (versus vertically integrated) input supply firms when contracts are incomplete. We start by modeling […]
Property Rights, Firm Boundaries, and R&D Inputs
A New Dynamism in the Public Domain
Author(s): Robert P. Merges Year: 2004 Abstract: Many believe intellectual property has overreached, and that policymakers must respond. In this essay, I argue that the critique may have merit, but private parties are in some cases taking matters into their own hands. Firms and individuals are increasingly injecting information into the public domain with the […]
A Transactional View of Property Right
Author(s): Robert P. Merges Year: 2005 Abstract: Property rights and contract law are two of our most basic legal categories. Many legal scholars describe what makes them different; this Essay describes how they work together to promote economic exchange. Incorporating the insights of both “transaction cost” and “new property rights” economics, it identifies two crucial […]
The Continuing Vitality of Music Performance Rights Organizations
Author(s): Robert P. Merges Year: 2008 Abstract: Some commentators see the need for major changes in the legal and institutional framework surrounding the music industry. Some proposals call for revising or eliminating performing rights organizations (PROs), which have for many years now represented the interests of songwriters in their dealings with broadcasters and other companies […]
Now and Then, Here and There: A Review Essay on Khan, the Democratization of Invention, and Blind, et al., Software Patents
Author(s): Robert P. Merges Year: 2007 Abstract: This Review Essay will appear in the Journal of Economic Literature. It covers two books: The Democratization of Innovation by Zorina Khan, and Knut Blind, et al., Software Patents. The Khan book argues that a wise intellectual property policy – in particular, a highly “democratic” legal order that […]
Property Rights Theory and the Employed Inventor
Author(s): Robert P. Merges Year: 1997 Abstract: This paper explains and defends the legal rules governing employed inventors in the United States. In particular, it justifies the oft-criticized propensity of courts to defer to apparently one-sided “pre-invention assignment” agreements that give corporate employers broad rights in the inventions their employees make during (and in some […]
The Strange Odyssey of Software Interfaces and Intellectual Property Law
Author(s): Pamela Samuelson Year: 2009 Abstract: This book chapter traces the strange odyssey of interfaces through various forms of intellectual property protection. Interface specifications were initially either public domain documents or protected as trade secrets, depending on whether or not they were published. For a time, it seemed as though sui generis protection would be […]
What Effects Do Legal Rules Have on Service Innovation?
Author(s): Pamela Samuelson Year: 2009 Abstract: Intellectual property, contract, and tort laws likely have effects on levels of innovation in service sectors of the economy. Legal rules that are too strong or too strict may discourage investment in service innovation; yet, rules that are too weak or too loose may result in suboptimal investments in […]
Five Challenges for Regulating the Global Information Society
Author(s): Pamela Samuelson Year: 2000 Abstract: The Internet is unquestionably having a profound effect on many aspects of the social, cultural, economic, and legal systems of planet Earth. Indeed, advances in the Internet and in other global communications technologies make it possible to contemplate the development of a global information society. Such a society may […]
Global Justice in Healthcare: Developing Drugs for the Developing World
Author(s): Talha Syed Year: 2006 Abstract: Each year, roughly nine million people in the developing world die from infectious diseases. The large proportion of those deaths could be prevented, either by making existing drugs available at low prices in developing countries, or by augmenting the resources devoted to the creation of new vaccines and treatments […]