The Innovation Commons
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
1-1-2012
Abstract
This chapter on the “innovation commons” examines both the socially beneficial and the harmful explanations given for joint research, joint production, and standard setting. It argues that IP collaborations are often best understood as a way of compensating for IP systems that have divided rights into tiny pieces with uncertain boundaries. These rights cannot be gainfully used unless they are reassembled. Importantly, the arguments for both individual appropriation and commons management are economic. Exclusion by legal process has a cost, and in intellectual property regimes these costs are particularly high because the boundaries are so ambiguous. A firm invests in the creation and defense of individual boundaries only to the extent that the gains from exclusion are greater than those from cooperation. The line of equipoise between these two costs identifies the boundary between individual and community management.
Keywords
joint research, joint production, standard setting, intellectual property collaborations
Publication Title
Creation without Restraint: Promoting Liberty and Rivalry in Innovation
Repository Citation
Hovenkamp, Herbert and Bohannan, Christina, "The Innovation Commons" (2012). Book Chapters. 65.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_chapters/65
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199738830.003.0013
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199738830.003.0013