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TOTM My colleague Adam Mossoff is blogging over at the Volokh Conspiracy on his fascinating paper, A Stitch in Time: The Rise and Fall of the . . .
My colleague Adam Mossoff is blogging over at the Volokh Conspiracy on his fascinating paper, A Stitch in Time: The Rise and Fall of the Sewing Machine Patent Thicket. Here’s an excerpt from the first post…
Read the full piece here.
TOTM When I came onto the job market in 2004, a number of advisers told me that I should not market myself as an “antitrust guy.” . . .
When I came onto the job market in 2004, a number of advisers told me that I should not market myself as an “antitrust guy.” The prevailing view on the job market was that “antitrust was dead.” This perception was conveyed one way or another in interviews or conversations with folks in the legal academy. The conventional wisdom was that nothing exciting had happened in the antitrust world since the Reagan era. On top of that, the story goes, there were few important questions that remained to be answered and not only minor contributions left around the margins. I ignored the advice at the time thanks to an uncle (and antitrust lawyer) who had turned me on to economics and antitrust in high school. Truth be told I really didn’t want to study or write about anything else at the time and really wasn’t interested in saying otherwise.
TOTM I am enjoying Professor Carrier’s new book Innovation in the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law. I will focus my discussion here on patent issues discussed in Part III of the book.
I am enjoying Professor Carrier’s new book Innovation in the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law. I will focus my discussion here on patent issues discussed in Part III of the book.
TOTM I, too, join the rest of the participants in congratulating Michael Carrier on this great book about this great topic. I have enjoyed reading Michael’s work in the past and I enjoyed meeting him at a conference last year.
I, too, join the rest of the participants in congratulating Michael Carrier on this great book about this great topic. I have enjoyed reading Michael’s work in the past and I enjoyed meeting him at a conference last year. He is a wonderfully warm, bright, and engaging person. Although I wish that I had more of an opportunity to fully read his impressive text before the date of this on-line symposium, I am grateful for the opportunity to read a great deal of the book and to at least skim the remainder. The wonderful conference that Damien Geradin and his colleagues hosted on these same issues in Amsterdam these past few days was a pleasant distraction. (For Damien’s conference click here).
TOTM I enjoyed reading Mike’s book very much. It provides an excellent primer on antitrust, IP, and innovation. He synthesizes the legal and economic foundations, contours, and controversies in an accessible fashion.
I enjoyed reading Mike’s book very much. It provides an excellent primer on antitrust, IP, and innovation. He synthesizes the legal and economic foundations, contours, and controversies in an accessible fashion. I applaud him for doing this because frankly, it is tough to do given that the fields are quite technical and specialized. The book really is appropriate for a general audience. That said, I agree with some of the previous commentators that at times Mike oversimplifies some of the very heated debates he summarizes; given the breadth and complexity of issues, I cannot imagine how he wouldn’t do so.
TOTM First, I want to join the rest of the participants in congratulating Professor Carrier on an excellent and well-written book emerging out of a thoughtful . . .
First, I want to join the rest of the participants in congratulating Professor Carrier on an excellent and well-written book emerging out of a thoughtful and ambitious project. The project, and the book, are provocative, important contributions to the literature, and usefully synthesize many of the most important debates in both antitrust and intellectual property.
TOTM Congratulations to Mike on a very fine book, which I must admit I am still in the process of digesting. I will confine my initial . . .
Congratulations to Mike on a very fine book, which I must admit I am still in the process of digesting. I will confine my initial comments to Mike’s chapter on patent settlements (Chapter 15), which I understand will also be coming out as an article in the Michigan Law Review.
TOTM It is trite to say that “we are all Schumpeterians now.” When it comes to appreciating the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship, however, we are. . . .
It is trite to say that “we are all Schumpeterians now.” When it comes to appreciating the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship, however, we are. Schumpeter, unfortunately, did not leave a theory of innovation that lends itself to easy application to public policy prescriptions, as Brad De Long has explained so clearly. By so clearly highlighting the role that antitrust law and intellectual property policy can play in spurring innovation, Michael Carrier has done the field a great service. Indeed, Mike has written an impressive, ambitious, and important book. But in a post like this, I come not to praise him, but to take pot shots from the peanut gallery.
Scholarship Abstract When Michael Heller proposed that excessively fragmented property rights in land can frustrate its commercial development, patent scholars began debating whether Heller’s anticommons theory . . .
When Michael Heller proposed that excessively fragmented property rights in land can frustrate its commercial development, patent scholars began debating whether Heller’s anticommons theory applies to property rights in inventions. Do “patent thickets” exist? The rise and fall of the first American patent thicket — the Sewing Machine War of the 1850s — confirms that patent thickets do exist and that they can frustrate commercial development of new products. But this historical patent thicket also challenges the widely held assumption that this is a modern problem arising from allegedly new issues in the patent system, such as incremental high-tech innovation and the impact of “patent trolls.” The Sewing Machine War exhibited all of these phenomena, proving that these are hoary issues in patent law. The denouement of this patent thicket in the Sewing Machine Combination of 1856, the first privately formed patent pool, further challenges the conventional wisdom that patent thickets are best solved through public-ordering regimes that limit property rights in patents. The invention and incredible commercial success of the sewing machine is a striking account of early American technological, commercial, and legal ingenuity, which heralds important empirical lessons for how patent thicket theory is understood and applied today.
