Law and Economics Commons^™

The Political Economy Of Data Protection, Peter K. Yu

Peter K. Yu

Information is the lifeblood of a knowledge-based economy. The control of data and the ability to translate them into meaningful information is indispensable to businesspeople, policymakers, scientists, engineers, researchers, students, and consumers. Having useful, and at times exclusive, information improves productivity, advances education and training, and helps create a more informed citizenry. In the past two decades, those who collected or obtained access to a large amount of data began to explore ways to use the collected data as an income stream. Because the then-existing laws did not offer adequate protection for that particular purpose, they actively lobbied for stronger …

3d Printing And Healthcare: Will Laws, Lawyers, And Companies Stand In The Way Of Patient Care?, Evan R. Youngstrom

Evan R. Youngstrom

Today, our society is on a precipice of significant advancement in healthcare because 3D printing will usher in the next generation of medicine. The next generation will be driven by customization, which will allow doctors to replace limbs and individualize drugs. However, the next generation will be without large pharmaceutical companies and their justifications for strong intellectual property rights. However, the current patent system (which is underpinned by a social tradeoff made from property incentives) is not flexible enough to cope with 3D printing’s rapid development. Very soon, the social tradeoff will no longer benefit society, so it must be …

Visualizing Dna Proof, Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos

Nicholas L Georgakopoulos

DNA proof inherently involves the use of probability theory, which is often counterintuitive. Visual depictions of probability theory, however, can clarify the analysis and make it tractable. A DNA hit from a large database is a notoriously difficult probabi­li­ty theory issue, yet the visuals should enable courts and juries to handle it. The Puckett facts are an example of a general approach: A search in a large DNA database produces a hit for a cold crime from 1972 San Francisco. Probability theory allows us to process the probabilities that someone else in the database, someone not in the database, or …

Copyright Under Siege: An Economic Analysis Of The Essential Facilities Doctrine And The Compulsory Licensing Of Copyrighted Works, 17 Alb. L.J. Sci. & Tech. 481 (2007), Daryl Lim

Daryl Lim

No abstract provided.

The Self, The Stasi, The Nsa: Privacy, Knowledge, And Complicity In The Surveillance State, Richard Warner, Robert H. Sloan

Richard Warner

We focus on privacy in public. The notion dates back over a century, at least to the work of the German sociologist, Georg Simmel. Simmel observed that people voluntarily limit their knowledge of each other as they interact in a wide variety of social and commercial roles, thereby making certain information private relative to the interaction even if it is otherwise publicly available. Current governmental surveillance in the US (and elsewhere) reduces privacy in public. But to what extent?

The question matters because adequate self-realization requires adequate privacy in public. That in turn depends on informational norms, social norms that …

Bridgefunding Is Crowdfunding For Startups Across The Private Equity Gap, Seth C. Oranburg

Seth C Oranburg

Title III of the JOBS Act of 2012, which attempts to encourage entrepreneurship by allowing startups and small business to sell stock to the general public over the Internet through “crowdfunding,” is completely backwards. Its ceiling should be a floor—the $1 million limit should be inverted. By capping startups at raising $1 million from crowdfunding, the JOBS Act does not address the private equity gap, a fundamental problem in startup markets, and exposes unsophisticated investors to risk and fraud. This Article presents a regulatory framework premised on “bridgefunding,” an approach that this article develops to protect new investors by encouraging …

The Fashion Lottery: Cooperative Innovation In Stochastic Markets, Jonathan Barnett, Gilles Grolleau, Sana El Harbi

Jonathan M Barnett

The fashion market is an anomaly: innovation is vigorous but original producers are substantially unprotected against imitation, which proliferates under an incomplete property regime consisting of strong trademark protections and weak design protections. We account for this anomaly through a “cooperative innovation” model where producers prefer an incomplete property regime that permits some imitation to alternative regimes that permit no imitation or all imitation, independent of budget constraints. A property regime that permits positive but limited levels of imitation operates as a form of group insurance that alleviates the risk of recoupment failure in a market characterized by demand uncertainty, …

Property As Process: How Innovation Markets Select Innovation Regimes, Jonathan M. Barnett

Jonathan M Barnett

It is commonly asserted that innovation markets suffer from excessive intellectualproperty protections, which in turn stifle output. But empirical inquiries can neither confirm nor deny this assertion. Under the “agnostic” assumption that we cannot assess directly whether intellectual-property coverage is excessive, an alternative query is proposed: can the market assess if any “propertization outcome” is excessive and then undertake actions to yield a socially preferable outcome? Grounded in the “bottom up” methodology of new institutional economics, this process-based approach takes the view that innovator populations make rent-seeking investments that continuously “select” among a range of “innovation regimes” that trade off …

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

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; …

Bargaining In The Shadow Of Big Data, Dru Stevenson, Nicholas J. Wagoner

Dru Stevenson

Attorney bargaining has traditionally taken place in the shadow of trial, as litigants alter their pretrial behavior—including their willingness to negotiate a settlement—based on their forecast of the outcome at trial and associated costs. Lawyers bargaining in the shadow of trial have traditionally relied on their knowledge of precedent, intuition, and previous interactions with the presiding judge and opposing counsel to forecast trial outcomes and litigation costs. Today, however, technology for leveraging legal data is moving the practice of law into the shadow of the trends and patterns observable in aggregated litigation data. In this Article, we describe the tools …

Criminal Innovation And The Warrant Requirement: Reconsidering The Rights-Police Efficiency Trade-Off, Tonja Jacobi, Jonah Kind

Tonja Jacobi

It is routinely assumed that there is a trade-off between police efficiency and the warrant requirement. But existing analysis ignores the interaction between police investigative practices and criminal innovation. Narrowing the definition of a search or otherwise limiting the requirement for a warrant gives criminals greater incentive to innovate to avoid detection. With limited police resources to develop countermeasures, police will often be just as effective at capturing criminals when facing higher Fourth Amendment hurdles. We provide a game theoretic model that shows that when police investigation and criminal innovation are considered in a dynamic context, the police efficiency rationale …

What Do We Worry About When We Worry About Price Discrimination? The Law And Ethics Of Using Personal Information For Pricing, Akiva A. Miller

Akiva A Miller

New information technologies have dramatically increased sellers’ ability to engage in retail price discrimination. Debates over using personal information for price discrimination frequently treat it as a single problem, and are not sufficiently sensitive to the variety of price discrimination practices, the different kinds of information they require in order to succeed, and the different ethical concerns they raise. This paper explores the ethical and legal debate over regulating price discrimination facilitated by consumers’ personal information. Various kinds of “privacy remedies”—self-regulation, technological fixes, state regulation, and legislating private causes of legal action—each have their place. By drawing distinctions between various …

The Admissibility Of Bayesian Likelihood Ratios, Robert Sanger

Robert M. Sanger

As someone once said, “there are lies, damned lies and statistics.” Anyone who has tried a case where statistics are presented to the jury knows how powerful statistics can be. Jurors are generally not versed in statistics and are vulnerable to being misled. Ironically, judges may not be much better at identifying valid statistical analyses as opposed to bogus ones.

In this Criminal Justice column we will look at statistical analysis and its place in the courtroom. We will look at a recent decision of the British Courts and the implications for that type of thinking on American jurisprudence. To …

Science And Compliance In The Arctic: A Constructivist Approach To The Un Commission On The Limits Of The Continental Shelf, Sari M. Graben, Peter Harrison

Sari M Graben

The United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf is expected to play an essential role in delineating the rights of the Arctic states to sea bed resources in the Arctic Ocean. Positivist theories of international law generally source Arctic state compliance to the binding effect of Article 76 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. However, positivist explanations fail to answer why the Arctic states, which are authorized to establish their own limits, would accept the sovereignty costs associated with the Commission’s legal and scientific interpretations. In order to better understand how the Commission …

Copyright Freeconomics, John M. Newman

John M. Newman

Innovation has wreaked creative destruction on traditional content platforms. During the decade following Napster’s rise and fall, industry organizations launched litigation campaigns to combat the dramatic downward pricing pressure created by the advent of zero-price, copyright-infringing content. These campaigns attracted a torrent of debate, still ongoing, among scholars and stakeholders—but this debate has missed the forest for the trees. Industry organizations have abandoned litigation efforts, and many copyright owners now compete directly with infringing products by offering licit content at a price of $0.

This sea change has ushered in an era of “copyright freeconomics.” Drawing on an emerging body …

Surviving The America Invents Act’S Overhaul Of U.S. Patent Law - Startup And Small Business Perspectives, Ron D. Katznelson

Ron D. Katznelson

No abstract provided.

Rescuing Access To Patented Essential Medicines: Pharmaceutical Companies As Tortfeasors Under The Prevented Rescue Tort Theory, Richard Cameron Gower

Richard Cameron Gower

Despite some difficulties, state tort law can be argued to create a unique exception to patent law. Specifically, the prevented rescue doctrine suggests that charities and others can circumvent patents on certain critical medications when such actions are necessary to save individuals from death or serious harm. Although this Article finds that the prevented rescue tort doctrines is preempted by federal patent law, all hope is not lost. A federal substantive due process claim may be brought that uses the common law to demonstrate a fundamental right that has long been protected by our Nation’s legal traditions. Moreover, this Article …

New “Architecture” And Revitalizing The Un Global Compact, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

Some advocates of sustainable development possess an almost theological faith in what I refer to as “rhetorical” sustainable development as the path to providing for the sound future of human civilizations and critical ecological systems. Simply put, if we try to think “too big” and “bite off too much” then the system we are trying to control or influence consumes us and our resources and we fail miserably. There is real and predictable danger in grandeur. This means we need to think about achieving sustainability in very specific and concrete terms applied to clear goals and an honest understanding of …

La Transparencia En La Protección De Datos Personales, Bruno L. Costantini García

Bruno L. Costantini García

La Transparencia en la Protección de Datos Personales, ponencia elaborada dentro de los trabajos del VII Congreso Nacional de Organismos Públicos Autónomos (OPAM)

Aspectos Generales Dela Publicidad En México. "La Publicidad De Productos, Servicios, Y Actividades Reguladas Por La Ley General De Salud", Bruno L. Costantini García

Bruno L. Costantini García

Introducción a las generalidades de la regulación en materia de publicidad de insumos para el consumo humano (salud) en México.

Patent Reversion: An Employee-Inventor's Second Bite At The Apple, Richard Kamprath

Richard Kamprath

In an attempt to more fully compensate employee-inventors without harming the return on investment of employers, a patent reversion is proposed in which the rights to the patent revert to joint ownership between the original inventor and the current owner. In Section I, the background of the relationship between employer and employee-inventor will be discussed in terms of patent rights. This section will outline the problems inherent in the pre-assignment status quo of these rights from employees to employers. Section II will begin with Part A, which is a review of previously proposed solutions to the under-compensation of employee-inventors. The …

Arctic Justice: Addressing Persistent Organic Pollutants, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

This article recommends enhanced governance of persistent organic pollutants through incentives to develop environmentally sound, climate friendly technologies as well as caution in developing the Arctic. It highlights the toxicity challenges presented by POPs to Arctic people and ecosystems.

Polar Law And Good Governance, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

This chapter will assess the Antarctic Treaty System, ask what polar lessons can be learned regarding common pool resources, and analyze law of the sea and related measures. It will consider such substantive areas as Arctic and Antarctic natural resource management and procedural opportunities as inclusive governance structures. Enhancing good governance can occur through trust building forums that bring together stakeholders, share information, and make environmentally sound decisions regarding sustainable development.

The Vehicle Miles Tax: The Unintended Consequences Of Paying As You Drive, Gregory A. Lush

Gregory A. Lush

No abstract provided.

The Vehicle Miles Tax: The Unintended Consequences Of Paying As You Drive, Gregory A. Lush

Gregory A. Lush

3. A Vehicle Miles Tax Reduces Manufacturer Incentives to Build Electric Vehicles

It follows that if consumers have few incentives to buy electric vehicles, manufacturers will have less of an incentive to make them. If electric cars were not in demand, then why would anyone make them and try to sell them? In a market that is finding electric vehicles to be a tough sell, we need to encourage the sale and production of electric vehicles as much as possible. The effect of enacting a mileage-based tax will be the attrition of automakers producing electric vehicles, furthering the nation’s dependency …

The Transaction Cost Benefits Of Electronic Patent Licensing Platforms: A Discussion At The Example Of The Patentbooks Model, Roya Ghafele, Benjamin Gibert

Roya Ghafele

Current mechanisms to compensate inventors and improve legal access to their inventions remain ineffective. Manufacturers encounter significant transaction costs in the process of licensing the multitude of patent rights implicated in their products. High-technology product manufacturing requires access to a diverse pool of technologies that are owned by different organizations all over the world. The transaction costs of licensing these disparate rights are inhibiting unlicensed manufacturers in emerging economies from entering important markets and simultaneously limiting the revenue patent owners can generate from non-exclusive licenses. As communications technologies improve, innovative licensing mechanisms are emerging that can help firms avoid many …

Noción Y Elementos Existenciales Del Título De Crédito, Bruno L. Costantini García

Bruno L. Costantini García

Discernir la noción y elementos de existencia de los títulos de crédito, considerando la doctrina y la denominación expresada en nuestra Ley General de Títulos y Operaciones de Crédito, conceptualizando el término de los documentos que consignan un derecho crediticio propio de su naturaleza y deslindando de manera dogmatica y exegética los elementos que lo forman y le dan su funcionamiento, mediante una visión de las instituciones jurídicas que les dan su existencia y aplicación dentro del devenir de los actos de comercio.

The Misuse Of Tax Incentives To Align Management-Shareholder Interests, James R. Repetti

James R. Repetti

The U.S. tax system contains many provisions which are intended to align management of large publicly traded companies more closely to stockholders. This article shows that many of the tax provisions that have been adopted are of questionable effectiveness because they fail to address the complexities of stockholder-management relations in attempting to motivate management to act in the best interests of stockholders. The article proposes that rather than Congress attempting to identify the best way that it can use the tax system to motivate management, Congress should eliminate tax provisions which subsidize management's inefficiencies in order to encourage stockholders, themselves, …

Generalidades De La Propiedad Intelectual En México, Bruno L. Costantini García

Bruno L. Costantini García

Presentación de las Generalidades de la Propiedad Intelectual en México (Propiedad Industrial y Derechos de Autor), legislación que la rige, aplicación y modalidades