Contracting into Liability Rules: Intellectual Property Rights and Collective Rights Organizations

Merges, Robert P.

doi:10.2307/3480996

Cited by 222 publications

(85 citation statements)

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“…While this short-termist behavior is only transitory here -the cooperative reverts to the superior technology once it gets going 16 -, it would arise repeatedly if the cooperative were to grow slowly over time, say because of a positive trend in the number of potential users. 15 For any I and θ satisfying (4), there always exist J and γ such that 2δ (θ − γ) > I −J > δ (θ − γ); therefore, the inferior technology may indeed be adopted even when the superior one would be both efficient and viable.…”

Section: Robustness and Extensionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…15 For any I and θ satisfying (4), there always exist J and γ such that 2δ (θ − γ) > I −J > δ (θ − γ); therefore, the inferior technology may indeed be adopted even when the superior one would be both efficient and viable. 16 Letting v ∈ {γ, θ} denote the surplus generated by the technology adopted in the previous period, if the date-t generation anticipates that the next one will adopt the superior technology, it gets v − I/2 + δ (θ − I/2) if it, too, invests in the superior technology and θ − J/2 + δ max {γ − I/2, 0} if it invests instead in the inferior technology; thus, even if γ > I/2 (which is the case whenÛ…”

Section: Robustness and Extensionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Financing and access in cooperatives

Rey¹,

Tirole²

2007

International Journal of Industrial Organization

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Cooperative undertakings account for a substantial share of developed market economies and that share is likely to grow with the advent of the new economy. The paper develops a dynamic investment framework that relates access policies, financing and growth of cooperatives. It shows how discriminating among users affects the viability of cooperatives and impacts social efficiency. It then argues that in most circumstances, the cooperative form, even when viable on a stand-alone basis, is a weak competitor against alternative organizational forms. Last, the paper stresses that access policies involve a standard social tradeoff between static efficiency and innovation.

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Section: Robustness and Extensionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Robustness and Extensionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Financing and access in cooperatives

Rey¹,

Tirole²

2007

International Journal of Industrial Organization

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“…Thus, Merton (1973) documented the existence of a "communitarian" norm in such communities, mandating the open sharing of the "intellectual property" of scientific research results and research methods used to obtain them. Others have explored the detailed workings of this norm and how it is limited in some circumstances by implicit or explicit assertion of property rights by scientists and their employers (e.g., Dasgupta and David 1984, Rai 1999, Merges 1996a Ellickson and some others argue that norms can sometimes be used in place of law. But Rai (1999) argues that this portrait has been overdrawn by early research on the topic.…”

Section: Norms-based Intellectual Property Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Norms-Based Intellectual Property Systems: The Case of French Chefs

Fauchart

Hippel

2008

Organization Science

173

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In this paper we propose that "norms-based" intellectual property systems exist today, and are an important complement to or substitute for law-based intellectual property systems. Norms-based IP systems, as we define them, operate entirely upon the basis of implicit social norms that are held in common by members of a given community. Within that community, they offer functionality similar to contemporary law-based IP systems with respect to both the nature of rights protected and the effectiveness of protection provided.We document the existence of a norms-based IP system among a sample of accomplished French chefs. These chefs consider recipes they develop to be a very valuable form of intellectual property. At the same time, recipes are not a form of innovation that is effectively covered by law-based intellectual property systems. Via grounded research, we identify three strong implicit social norms related to the protection of recipe IP. Via quantitative research, we find that accomplished chefs enforce these norms, and apply them in ways that enhance their private economic returns from their recipe-related IP.In our discussion, we compare the attributes of norms-based and law-based IP systems, arguing that each has different advantages and drawbacks. We also point out that the existence of norms-based IP systems means that many "information commons" may prove to be crisscrossed by norms-based fences, with community access controlled by community IP owners.

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“…In an influential article in the 1996 California Law Review, Robert Merges spelled out how GC's analysis of common pool resource institutions could apply as well to an array of private organizations that have emerged for the management of intellectual property rights (Merges 1996a). According to Merges, IP rights-holders are often in situations in which it is advantageous to use one another's productions, and when they are in such situations, they have often been able to generate institutional structures and collective norms among themselves for valuing, monitoring, and enforcing entitlements, without the need for governmental intervention.…”

Section: The Impact Of Governing the Commons On The American Legal Acmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ostrom and the lawyers: The impact of Governing the Commons on the American legal academy

Rose

2011

Int J Commons

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American legal academics began to cite Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons (GC) shortly after its 1990 publication, with citations peaking in the mid-2000s and with signs of a new peak in 2010 in the wake of Ostrom's Nobel Prize in Economics. The legal scholars most interested in GC have worked in three areas: general property theory, environmental and natural resource law, and since the mid-1990s, intellectual property. In all those areas legal scholars have found GC and its many examples a strong source of support for the proposition that people can cooperate to overcome common pool resource issues, managing resources through informal norms rather than either individual property or coercive government. Legal academics have also been at least mildly critical of GC, however. A number have tried to balance the attractive features of GC's governance model -stability and sustainability -with more standard legal models favoring toward open markets, fluid change and egalitarianism.

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Contracting into Liability Rules: Intellectual Property Rights and Collective Rights Organizations

Abstract: As intellectual property rights have gained in prominence, businesspeople and scholars alike have complained of the increasing burden of obtaining intellectual property licenses and, failing this

Cited by 222 publications

References 0 publications

Financing and access in cooperatives

Financing and access in cooperatives

Norms-Based Intellectual Property Systems: The Case of French Chefs

Ostrom and the lawyers: The impact of Governing the Commons on the American legal academy

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