Should Governments Subsidize Free/Open Source Software?
Justin Johnson reviews a paper by Klaus Schmidt and Monica Schnitzer that urges caution regarding subsidies for free/open source software.
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Archive for January, 2003
Does the US Patent Office Reject Patent Applications?
Mickey Davis summarizes a paper by Cecil Quillen and Ogden Webster that finds that when patent statistics for the U.S. patent office are analyzed carefully, it appears the the patent office rejects very few applications.
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Free/Open Source in the British Industrial Revolution?
Alessandro Nuvolari’s paper on “Collective Invention” during the British Industrial Revolution (summarized by James Bessen) finds that active sharing of inventions brought large productivity advances to steam engines in the Cornish mines, but only after James Watt’s patents expired.
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Do Patents Inhibit AIDS Treatment in Africa?
Amir Attaran and Lee Gillespie-White published a controversial paper arguing that patents are not a major barrier to access to AIDS drugs in Africa. Kristina Lybecker carefully reviews their argument and finds it wanting.
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