Competition Policy and Patent Law under Uncertainty: Regulating Innovation

by Geoffrey A. Manne, Joshua D. Wright

Overview

The regulation of innovation and the optimal design of legal institutions in an environment of uncertainty are two of the most important policy challenges of the twenty-first century. Innovation is critical to economic growth. Regulatory design decisions, and, in particular, competition policy and intellectual property regimes, can have profound consequences for economic growth. However, remarkably little is known about the relationship between innovation, competition, and regulatory policy. Any legal regime must attempt to assess the tradeoffs associated with rules that will affect incentives to innovate, allocative efficiency, competition, and freedom of economic actors to commercialize the fruits of their innovative labors. The essays in this book approach this critical set of problems from an economic perspective, relying on the tools of microeconomics, quantitative analysis, and comparative institutional analysis to explore and begin to provide answers to the myriad challenges facing policymakers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107616318
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/06/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	558
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 1.26(d)

About the Author

Geoffrey A. Manne is the founder and Executive Director of the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE) in Portland, Oregon. He is also a Lecturer in Law at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland and an academic affiliate of LECG, the global expert services and consulting firm. Prior to founding ICLE, Professor Manne was Director of Global Public Policy at LECG and directed Microsoft's legal and economics academic outreach program. Earlier, Professor Manne was a law professor specializing in antitrust law and economics, intellectual property law, corporate governance and international economic regulation, all topics on which he has written. His publications have appeared in journals including the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the Wisconsin Law Review, the Alabama Law Review and the Arizona Law Review. He is an expert in the economic analysis of law, drawing on degrees from the University of Chicago as well as work for Judge Richard Posner, private practice, and brief service at the FTC. Professor Manne has practised antitrust law at Latham and Watkins, has served as a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School and an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law, and has clerked for Judge Morris S. Arnold on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. Professor Manne is a co-founder of the Microsoft/George Mason Annual Conference on the Law and Economics of Innovation (with Joshua Wright). He blogs at Truth on the Market.

Joshua D. Wright is an Associate Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, Arlington, Virginia, and the Director of Research of the International Center for Law and Economics. Professor Wright was appointed as the inaugural Scholar in Residence at the Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Competition, where he served until autumn 2008. Professor Wright was a Visiting Professor at the University of Texas School of Law and was a Visiting Fellow at the Searle Center at the Northwestern University School of Law during the 2008–9 academic year. Professor Wright's areas of expertise include antitrust law and economics, intellectual property law, consumer protection, empirical law and economics, and economics of contracts. His publications have appeared in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Law and Economics, the Antitrust Law Journal, Competition Policy International, the Supreme Court Economic Review, the Yale Journal on Regulation, the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, the Review of Law and Economics and the UCLA Law Review. Prior to joining the faculty at George Mason, Professor Wright clerked for the Honorable James V. Selna of the Central District of California and taught law and economics at the Pepperdine University Graduate School of Public Policy. He blogs at Truth on the Market.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Part I. Keynotes: 1. Information, capital markets, and planned development: an essay Robert Cooter; 2. The disintegration of intellectual property Richard A. Epstein; Part II. The Economics of Innovation: 3. Regulation of bundling in standards and new technologies Stan J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis; 4. Unlocking technology: antitrust and innovation Daniel F. Spulber; 5. Creative construction: assimilation, specialization, and the technology life cycle Marco Iansiti and Greg Richards; Part III. Innovation and Competition Policy: 6. Favoring dynamic over static competition: implications for antitrust analysis and policy David Teece; 7. Antitrust, multidimensional competition, and innovation: do we have an antitrust-relevant theory of competition now? Joshua D. Wright; 8. Section 2 and article 82: a comparison of American and European approaches to monopolization law Keith N. Hylton and Haizhen Lee; Part IV. The Patent System: 9. Rewarding innovation efficiently: the case for exclusive rights Vincenzo Denicolò and Luigi Alberto Franzoni; 10. Presume nothing: rethinking patent law's presumption of validity Mark Lemley and Douglas G. Lichtman; 11. Patent notice and patent design Michael Meurer; Part V. Property Rights and the Theory of Patent Law: 12. Commercializing property rights in inventions: lessons for modern patent theory from classic patent doctrine Adam Mossoff; 13. Modularity rules: information flow in organizations, property, and intellectual property Henry Smith; 14. Removing the property from intellectual property and (intended?) pernicious impacts on innovation and competition F. Scott Kieff; Part VI. Intellectual Property and Antitrust: The Regulations of Standard-Setting Organizations: 15. Increments and incentives: the dynamic innovation implications of licensing patents under an incremental value rule Anne Layne-Farrar, Gerard Llobet and Jorge Padilla; 16. What's wrong with royalty rates in high technology industries? Damien Geradin; 17. Federalism, substantive pre-emption, and limits on antitrust: an application to patent hold-up Bruce H. Kobayashi and Joshua D. Wright.

Editorial Reviews

After a century of exponential growth in innovation, we have reached an era of serious doubts about the sustainability of the trend. Manne and Wright have put together a first-rate collection of essays addressing two of the important policy levers – competition law and patent law – that society can pull to stimulate or retard technological progress. Anyone interested in the future of innovation should read it.”– Daniel A. Crane, University of Michigan

“Here, in one volume, is a collection of papers by outstanding scholars who offer readers insightful new discussions of a wide variety of patent policy problems and puzzles. If you seek fresh, bright thoughts on these matters, this is your source.” – Harold Demsetz, University of California, Los Angeles

“This volume is an essential compendium of the best current thinking on a range of intersecting subjects – antitrust and patent law, dynamic versus static competition analysis, incentives for innovation, and the importance of humility in the formulation of policies concerning these subjects, about which all but first principles are uncertain and disputed. The essays originate in two conferences organized by the editors, who attracted the leading scholars in their respective fields to make contributions; the result is that rara avis, a contributed volume more valuable even than the sum of its considerable parts.” – Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, U.S. Court of Appeals, Washington, DC

“Competition Policy and Patent Law under Uncertainty is a splendid collection of essays edited by two top scholars of competition policy and intellectual property. The contributions come from many of the world’s leading experts in patent law, competition policy, and industrial economics. This anthology takes on a broad range of topics in a comprehensive and evenhanded way, including the political economy of patents, the patent process, and patent law as a system of property rights. It also includes excellent essays on post-issuance patent practices, the types of practices that might be deemed anticompetitive, the appropriate role of antitrust law, and even network effects and some legal history. This volume is a must-read for every serious scholar of patent and antitrust law. I cannot think of another book that offers this broad and rich a view of its subject.” – Herbert Hovenkamp, University of Iowa

From the Publisher