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Full-Text Articles in Law
Is There A Future For Future Claimants After Amchem Products, Inc. V. Windsor?, Alex Raskolnikov
Is There A Future For Future Claimants After Amchem Products, Inc. V. Windsor?, Alex Raskolnikov
Faculty Scholarship
In September 1990, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court appointed an Ad Hoc Committee on Asbestos Litigation in response to what was widely perceived as a "'failure of the federal court system to perform one of its vital roles in our society.'" Less than a year later, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred all untried asbestos cases to the eastern district of Pennsylvania for pretrial proceedings. In January 1993, these proceedings produced a global settlement class action of historic proportions, which the district court eventually approved in August 1994. In May 1996, in Georgine v. Amchem Products, …
Can Patents Deter Innovation? The Anticommons In Biomedical Research, Michael Heller, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Can Patents Deter Innovation? The Anticommons In Biomedical Research, Michael Heller, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Faculty Scholarship
The "tragedy of the commons" metaphor helps explain why people overuse shared resources. However, the recent proliferation of intellectual property rights in biomedical research suggests a different tragedy, an "anticommons" in which people underuse scarce resources because too many owners can block each other. Privatization of biomedical research must be more carefully deployed to sustain both upstream research and downstream product development. Otherwise, more intellectual property rights may lead paradoxically to fewer useful products for improving human health.