Law Commons^™

Intellectual Property And Competition, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

A legal system that relies on private property rights to promote economic development must consider that profits can come from two different sources. First, both competition under constant technology and innovation promote economic growth by granting many of the returns to the successful developer. Competition and innovation both increase output, whether measured by quantity or quality. Second, however, profits can come from practices that reduce output, in some cases by reducing quantity, or in others by reducing innovation.

IP rights and competition policy were traditionally regarded as in conflict. IP rights create monopoly, which was thought to be inimical to …

Slides: Water Leasing In The Lower Arkansas Valley: The "Super Ditch Company", Peter Nichols

Western Water Law, Policy and Management: Ripples, Currents, and New Channels for Inquiry (Martz Summer Conference, June 3-5)

Presenter: Peter NIchols, Trout, Raley, Montano, Witwer & Freeman, Denver, CO

28 slides

Patents, Property, And Competition Policy, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The decision to regulate involves the identification of markets where simple assignment of property rights is not sufficient to ensure satisfactory competitive results, usually because some type of market failure obtains. By contrast, if property rights are well defined when they are initially created and can subsequently be traded to some reasonably competitive equilibrium, then regulation is thought not to be necessary. In such cases the antitrust laws have a significant role to play in ensuring that the market can be as competitive as free trading allows. One problem with the patent system is that once a patent is granted …

Slides: Lower Arkansas Valley Super Ditch Company, Inc.: Water Leasing Program, Peter Nichols

Evolving Regional Frameworks for Ag-to-Urban Water Transfers (December 11)

Presenter: Peter Nichols, General Counsel of the Lower Arkansas Valley “Super Ditch” Company, Trout, Raley, Montano, Witwer & Freeman PC, Colorado

33 slides

Conservation Cartels: How Competition Policy Conflicts With Environmental Protection, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

The alleged purpose of antitrust law is to improve consumer welfare by proscribing actions and arrangements that reduce output and increase prices. Conservation seeks to improve human welfare by maximizing the long-term productive use of natural resources, a goal that often requires limiting consumption to sustainable levels. While conservation measures might increase prices in the short run, they enhance consumer welfare by increasing long-term production and ensuring the availability of valued resources over time. That is true whether the restrictions are imposed by a private conservation cartel or a government agency. Insofar as antitrust law fails to take this into …

Law As Design: Objects, Concepts, And Digital Things, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This Article initiates an account of things in the law, including both conceptual things and material things. Human relationships matter to the design of law. Yet things matter too. To an increasing extent, and particularly via the advent of digital technology, those relationships are not only considered ex post by the law but are designed into things, ex ante, by their producers. This development has a number of important dimensions. Some are familiar, such as the reification of conceptual things as material things, so that computer software is treated as a good. Others are new, such as the characterization of …