Law Commons^™

Everything You Want: The Paradox Of Customized Intellectual Property Regimes, Derek E. Bambauer

UF Law Faculty Publications

Special interest groups share a dream: enacting legislation customized for, and hopefully drafted by, their industry. Customized rules created via legislative capture, though, are the worst case scenario from a public choice perspective: they enable narrow interests to capture rents without generating sufficient societal benefits. American intellectual property law offers useful case studies in legislative capture: special interests have created their own rules three times in the past forty years with the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act, Audio Home Recording Act, and Vessel Hull Design Protection Act. Paradoxically, though, these customized IP systems have consistently disappointed their drafters: all three of …