Law Commons^™

Letter From Professor Timothy J. Brennan, Timothy J. Brennan

Scholarship Chronologically

Dear Wendy,

Thanks for sending me the recent pair of articles. I just had a chance to read them today while I'm getting my furnace and AC replaced. I enjoyed them very much, both for the chance to think about copyright issues and to read yet again your creative and insightful approach to them.

The most intriguing thing about the Dayton piece was the asymmetric mar- ket failure idea. (I'll come back to the prisoners' dilemma in connection with the LCP paper!) Your point that justifying copyright requires the belief that intellectual property markets won't work without copyright and that …

Asymmetric Market Failure And Prisoner's Dilemma In Intellectual Property, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

When competitors engage in unrestrained copying of each others' intangible products, the structure can resemble a prisoner's dilemma in which free choice leads to unnecessarily low individual payoffs and low social welfare. There are many ways to avoid these low payoffs, such as contract enforcement, direct regulation of copying behavior through IP, and direct government subsidies. All of these modes alter the payoff pattern away from prisoner's dilemma.

When should lawmakers place copyright law or other IP law among the prime options to consider?

Because copyright, patent, misappropriation and the like all work through private-property markets, one key is to …

Cd-Rom Symposium Transcript Two - 1992, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

MR. METALITZ: I think the point there is that amputation of authorship is really kind of an artifact of the registration process. You wouldn't be that concerned.