February 27, 2003
“The Case Against Intellectual Monopoly”
A few days ago, I referred to the work of economists Michelle Boldrin and David K. Levine. They run the “The Intellectual Property” page, which is a really cool site that applies economics and game theory to intellectual property to explain why we don’t really need “intellectual monopoly.” In their forthcoming book, they write:
“[W]hen we are discussing the elimination of intellectual monopoly, we mean the elimination of patent and copyright except for the right of sale. We also mean that the government would not enforce downstream licensing agreements. That is, shrink-wrap, or other agreements about how intellectual property is to be used could not be enforced in the courts.”
Check out the first chapter and the second.
(via Larry Solum’s Legal Theory blog. Larry is one of the greatest people I’ve ever interviewed, and he wrote a great piece about Eldred.)
Filed by Derek Slater at 7:25 pm under Big Ideas
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