Law Commons^™

Contract Adjudication In A Collaborative Economy, Matthew C. Jennejohn

Matthew C Jennejohn

In order to explore the debate between contextualist versus formalist contract interpretation, this article examines dispute resolution procedures in a novel class of contracts: agreements governing inter-firm collaboration. Analysis of these contracts reveals two phenomena: first, agreements governing collaboration include arbitration clauses more frequently than other commercial contracts; and second, these agreements routinely situate arbitration at the summit of complex escalation procedures. These observations raise, in turn, the following inter-related questions: first, why do collaborators avoid litigation; and second, what makes escalated and private dispute resolution appropriate?

The article’s central claim is that litigation is shunned because contemporary contextualist contract …

Why Typefaces Proliferate Without Copyright Protection, Blake Fry

Blake Fry

Classic economic theory predicts that without copyright protection authors and publishers would not have sufficient incentive to invest the time or money needed to produce or distribute new works, and the public would suffer a shortage. Copyrights are an attempt to solve this problem. By granting a monopoly to the author of an expressive work the government gives him the sole right to copy it. If only the author has this right, authors will get a reasonable rate of return, and thus a sufficient incentive to create new works. However, empirical evidence on whether adequate expressive works would be created …

Untapped Inventive Potential In U.S. Communities, Michael Meehan

Michael Meehan PhD

This paper combines the 2000 U.S. Census data and the National Bureau of Economic Research’s (NBER) Patent Citation Data File in order to analyze how certain community-level population and community factors correlate with overall patenting and relative rates of assigned and unassigned patenting. Among the interesting findings discussed are that, in addition to the fact that overall patenting increased with higher populations of employed people, higher populations of people with either terminal undergraduate or master’s degrees, and higher median income, the overall rates of patenting decreased, and did not merely remain the level, as the other sectors of a communities’ …

Laboratories Of Democracy? Policy Innovation In Decentralized Governments, Brian D. Galle, Joseph K. Leahy

Brian D. Galle

Innovations in government produce positive externalities for other jurisdictions. Theory therefore predicts that local government will tend to produce a lower than optimal amount of innovation, as officials will prefer to free-ride on innovation by others. As Susan Rose-Ackerman observed in 1980, these two predictions, if true, tend to undermine arguments by proponents of federated government that decentralization will lead to many competing “laboratories of democracy.” In this paper, which is aimed primarily at legal academics, we review and critically assess nearly three decades of responses to Rose-Ackerman’s arguments, none of which have been discussed in depth in the legal …

Fda New Drug Review Times, Prescription Drug User Fee Acts, And R&D Spending, John Vernon

John Vernon

FDA approval times have declined significantly since the enactment of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) in 1992. As a result, present value expected returns to pharmaceutical R&D have likely increased. In the current paper we employ a unique survey dataset, one which includes data from 1990 to 1999 on firm-level pharmaceutical R&D expenditures for 7 large, U.S.-based drug companies. We estimate the effect FDA approval times have on firm R&D spending. Controlling for other factors such as pharmaceutical profitability and cash flows, we estimate that a 10 percent decrease (increase) in FDA approval times leads to an increase …

Last-Mile Dilemma: How Network Neutrality Legislation Could Create Barriers To Innovation, Nicholas R. Brown

Nicholas R Brown

This paper takes a look at the various concepts of Network Neutrality and their affects on the end user. And then investigates proposed policy solutions and how that policy may hinder future Internet innovation.

Collaboration, Innovation, And Contract Design, Matthew C. Jennejohn

Matthew C Jennejohn

The rise of the network as a form of economic organization renders problematic our standard understanding of how capitalism is governed. As the governance of production shifts from vertical integration to horizontal contract, a puzzle arises: how do contracts, presumed to be susceptible to hold-up problems due to incompleteness, control production arrangements that by their nature invite opportunism? Relying on publicly-available contracts taken from a number of industries, I argue that firms govern their collaborations through a number of new contract mechanisms, the summation of which is a novel governance system. Because traditional theories of contractual control struggle to fully …

Preserving Competition In Multi-Sided Innovative Markets: How Do You Solve A Problem Like Google?, Kristine Laudadio Devine

Kristine L Devine

The unique characteristics of the search advertising industry encourage the development of anticompetitive monopoly power, facilitating the rise and dominance of companies like Google. First, the search advertising industry is subject to multi-sided network effects that create a positive feedback loop. An increase in the number of customers on one side of the market attracts increased numbers of customers on the other side, enabling dominant firms to entrench their market power. Second and relatedly, the search advertising industry operates in an innovative market where firms compete not to outdo competitors on price but rather to displace one another’s products entirely. …

Schumpeterian Law: Rethinking The Role Of Law In Fostering Entrepreneurship, Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger

Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger

Entrepreneurship is seen as a central driver of economic growth. Lawmakers around the world have ventured to use law to foster such entrepreneurship. Yet, frequently law is described as the enemy of entrepreneurs. This paper argues that this is not only a fundamental misconception, but that law may perform a central part in the entrepreneurial process itself. In part I of the paper I suggest three distinct roles – leveling, protecting, and enabling – that law can play to foster entrepreneurship. Part II develops a comprehensive framework for crafting laws that facilitate entrepreneurship based on the theory of risk. Utilizing …

Patent Carrots And Sticks: An Economic Model Of Nonobviousness, Michael J. Meurer, Katherine J. Strandburg

Katherine J. Strandburg

The authors develop an informal model of the impact of the nonobviousness standard on the choice of research projects. Previous models assume that the basic question confronting a researcher is, “Shall I produce this particular invention?” More realistically, the authors think a researcher asks, “Which research path shall I pursue?” The model shows that a patent serves as a carrot to induce the choice of more difficult projects than would be pursued under the no-patent alternative. The nonobviousness standard serves as a stick to prod researchers to choose even more difficult projects. The results of the model help us understand …

Pharmaceutical Lemons: Innovation And Regulation In The Drug Industry, Ariel Katz

Ariel Katz

Before a new drug can be marketed the Food and Drug Administration must be satisfied that it is safe and effective. According to conventional wisdom, the cost and delay involved in this process diminish the incentives to invest in the development of new drugs. Accordingly, several reforms aimed at restoring such incentives have been implemented and others have been advocated. This paper challenges the central argument in the debate on the topic, namely that drug regulation and drug innovation are necessarily at odds with each other. Although intuitively appealing, the argument that drug regulation negatively affects the incentives to innovate …

Patentability Of Software Inventions, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Software is very expensive to develop but very inexpensive to copy. Just by copying a software you create an exact duplicate of the original software and all with the same functionality. There is no difference between the original (which is bought) and the copy (pirated). The worse is when the source code is copied. The copier can even claim to have developed the software where the credit of the developer might go. The software developers use various methods to protect their source code such as copyright, trade secrets etc. but each having limitations. The developers are keen on finding legal …

Three Tests Of Patentability, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

United States patent law prescribes three major criteria of patentability, viz, novelty, usefulness and non-obviousness. These "three tests of patentability" are fundamentals behind issue of any patent from USPTO. It is important to know these fundamentals for any person who intends to work on patents.

What Happened And What To Do? (Concerning The Cyanide Pollution Of Szamos And Tisza Rivers), Milan Meszaros

Milan Meszaros physicist

Joining the EU demands rapid changes and revolutionary transformation in Hungary. We have to mention a Theorem :(Alvin Toffler): Rapid changes and revolutionary transformations are accompanied by crises and instability.

Because crises and instability is no one's interest, it is necessary to think and act efficiently together in order to minimise the (economic) burdens on the country. Joining the EU and innovation are two sides of a coin, international and national projections of the same process. On the national side innovation minimises the burdens. The innovation means that the environment protection must be moved from cost/expenditure side to income/source side. …

Inventors Of The World, Unite! A Call For Collective Action By Employee-Inventors, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

While technological innovation is often lauded as the cornerstone of the American economy into the next century, and both governmental and private observers ponder with fascination and some trepidation the ability of U.S. companies to reach and sustain high levels of innovative productivity, very little attention is paid to actual inventors. This article is one effort to draw attention to the importance of employee-inventors, the people who conceive and develop the inventions that American corporations rely on for growth and profitability. Though it is universally accepted that skills gained by an employee in the course of his employment belong to …