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Full-Text Articles in Intellectual Property Law
The Host's Dilemma: Strategic Forfeiture In Platform Markets For Informational Goods, Jonathan M. Barnett
The Host's Dilemma: Strategic Forfeiture In Platform Markets For Informational Goods, Jonathan M. Barnett
Jonathan M Barnett
Voluntary forfeiture of intellectual assets—often, exceptionally valuable assets--is surprisingly widespread in information technology markets. A simple economic rationale can account for these practices. By giving away access to core technologies, a platform holder commits against expropriating (and thereby induces) user investments that support platform value. To generate revenues that cover development and maintenance costs, the platform holder must regulate access to other goods and services within the total consumption bundle. The tradeoff between forfeiting access (to induce adoption) and regulating access (to recover costs) anticipates the substantial convergence of open and closed innovation models. Organizational patterns in the software and …
From Patent Thickets To Patent Networks: The Legal Infrastructure Of The Digital Economy, Jonathan M. Barnett
From Patent Thickets To Patent Networks: The Legal Infrastructure Of The Digital Economy, Jonathan M. Barnett
Jonathan M Barnett
Scholarly and popular commentary often assert that markets characterized by intensive patent issuance and enforcement suffer from “patent thickets” that suppress innovation. This assertion is difficult to reconcile with continuous robust levels of R&D investment, coupled with declining prices, in technology markets that have operated under intensive patent issuance and enforcement for several decades. Using network visualization software, I show that information and communication technology markets rely on patent pools and other cross-licensing structures to mitigate or avoid patent thickets and associated inefficiencies. Based on the composition, structure, terms and pricing of selected leading patent pools in the ICT market, …
Virtual Currencies: Bitcoin & What Now After Liberty Reserve, Silk Road, And Mt. Gox?, Lawrence J. Trautman
Virtual Currencies: Bitcoin & What Now After Liberty Reserve, Silk Road, And Mt. Gox?, Lawrence J. Trautman
Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.
During 2013, the U.S. Treasury Department evoked the first use of the 2001 Patriot Act to exclude virtual currency provider Liberty Reserve from the U.S. financial system. This article will discuss: the regulation of virtual currencies; cybercrimes and payment systems; darknets, Tor and the “deep web;” Bitcoin; Liberty Reserve; Silk Road and Mt. Gox. Virtual currencies have quickly become a reality, gaining significant traction in a very short period of time, and are evolving rapidly. Virtual currencies present particularly difficult law enforcement challenges because of their: ability to transcend national borders in the fraction of a second; unique jurisdictional issues; …
Of Mice And Men: Why An Anticommons Has Not Emerged In The Biotechnological Realm, Chester J. Shiu
Of Mice And Men: Why An Anticommons Has Not Emerged In The Biotechnological Realm, Chester J. Shiu
Chester J Shiu
In 1998 Michael Heller and Rebecca Eisenberg posited that excessive patenting of fundamental biomedical innovations might create a “tragedy of the anticommons.” A decade later, their dire predictions have not come to pass, an outcome which calls much of the legal scholarship on the topic into question. This Article proposes that legal commentators’ theoretical arguments have largely ignored two very important factors. First, the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—the single most important actor in the biomedical research industry—has played an active role in keeping the biomedical research domain open. In particular, regardless of what the current patent regime may theoretically …