Intellectual Property

Last update: 21 Apr 2025 21:17
First version:

---

"Informational property" might be a better term for something that embraces so much utterly unintellectual stuff...

IP laws, economics of IP, alternatives to conventional IP (such as open source and free software; prizes for discoveries instead of patents).

See also: the Information Society and the Information Economy; University-Industrial Complex

Recommended:
• Bruce Sterling, "Free as the Air, Free as Water, Free as Knowledge"
• Diane Coyle, The Weightless World: Strategies for Managing the Digital Economy [Review: The Weightless Juggernaut, or, Prospering from the Coming Troubles]
• William W. Fisher III, "The Growth of Intellectual Property: A History of the Ownership of Ideas in the United States" [PDF]
• Steve Landsburg, "The Mother-in-Law of Invention", Slate 13 January 2000 [Landsburg is an intensely annoying writer, and occasional moral idiot, but here he is merely channeling an interesting-sounding proposal by Michael Kremer, to have patents automatically bought out and brought in to the public domain.]
• Charles C. McCann, "Who Will Own Your Next Good Idea?", Atlantic Monthly September 1989 [Online]
• Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy [Good on the microeconomics of IP, with the slant of telling you how to get as much money out of it as possible. Review by Steve Laniel]

To read:
• Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly, Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance [Blurb]
• Yochai Benkler, "Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm," cs.CY/0109077
• Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine
  • "The Economics of Ideas and Intellectual Property", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 102 (2005): 1252--1256
  • Against Intellectual Monopoly [Full text free online, naturally]
• David Bollier, Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth
• James Boyle, Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information society
• Branscomb, Who Owns Information? From Privacy to Public Access
• James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer, Patent Failure [Review by Steve Laniel]
• Kenneth W. Dam
  • "Intellectual Property in an Age of Software and Biotechnology", John M. Olin Law and Economics Working Paper No. 35 (2nd series), University of Chicago (1997) [PDF]
  • "Intellectual Property and the Academic Enterprise", John M. Olin Law and Economics Working Paper No. 68 (2nd series), University of Chicago (1997) [PDF]
• Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (ed.), CODE: Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy [Blurb]
• Ove Granstrand, The Economics and Management of Intellectual Property: Towards Intellectual Capitalism
• Michael Heller, The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives
• Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom (eds.), Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice [Blurb]
• Bill Ivey, Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights
• Michael Kremer, "Patent Buy-Outs: A Mechanism for Encouraging Innovation" [Abstract. Presumably has been published but I'm feeling too lazy to track it down.]
• Gaëlle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski (eds.), Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property [Blurb, plus link to open-access PDF of the full text]
• Jessica Litman, Digital Copyright [Review by Danny Yee]
• Debrah Meloso, Jernej Copic and Peter Bossaerts, "Promoting Intellectual Discovery: Patents Versus Markets", Science 323 (2009): 1335--1339
• Suzanne Scotchmer, Innovations and Incentives