Technological Innovation and Intellectual Property

The US Courts have released the number of patent lawsuits filed in fiscal 2007. It is 2,896, up just 2% from the year before. Patent lawsuit filings appear to have hit a plateau.

What happens when you give out lots of property rights, but nobody exactly knows what those rights cover? Yes, that might describe software/business-method patents and the result is costly litigation, disputes and a net disincentive for innovation.

But that also describes recent markets in collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps. And with these markets, as anyone who has read a newspaper (some people still do that) during the last month knows, the result is a bit more ominous. My former venture capital investor and all-around Wise Man, Ben Rosen, sums up the current financial crisis in three words: “Nobody Knows Anything.”

Property rights have the potential to be strong institutions promoting economic growth. But, as these examples show, if the rights are not well-designed and well-implemented, they can be perverted from this goal. Brian Kahin draws the parallel between the financial/real-estate “bubble” with the still-expanding “bubble” in patents. As Brian suggests, combine that bubble with a Ponzi scheme (Intellectual Ventures) and you might have a real perversion.

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tiip “at” researchoninnovation.org

Purpose

The TIIP (Technological Innovation and Intellectual Property) newsletter discusses research on technological innovation and intellectual property in an informal, “blog” style. Researchers discuss their views and insights about new research and pose new questions. The aim is to help both scholarly researchers and interested non-academics better understand the social, cultural, economic and legal effects of different property rights and practices on innovative activity and to possibly define new directions for research.

Editorial Content

• Subject. The posts should be about research or something related to research, e.g., the implications of new research for policy. Relevant topics include research in economics, law, history, management and sociology about patents, licensing, innovation, open source/free software, public goods, copyrights (non-artistic) and trade secrecy.
• Sources. A regular group of bloggers provide most of the content. We also invite occasional guest bloggers and will publish submitted entries that meet our standards.
• Length. Short, from 100 words to 1,000 words.
• Style. The pieces should be accessible to a non-specialist audience. And the pieces should be personal, including personal musings about research and comments on the author’s own research. This means that the pieces do not need to maintain an “objective” academic voice, although they should treat other researchers in a collegial manner. The newsletter is not the place for rants or thorough-going critiques, however, careful, collegial criticism is appropriate.
• Other material. In addition to the standard posts, we will publish summaries of research papers (as in the TIIP archives) and announcements.

Contact

tiip “at” researchoninnovation.org