A Recommendation on How to Intelligently Approach Emerging Problems in Intellectual Property Systems
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Douglass C. North
Abstract
We currently have no framework that allows us to really understand how a political system works, and how property rights and patent systems evolved, and so we do not have a body of theory that allows us to make predictive statements that would in fact lead to improving the function of property rights and patent systems. The body of neoclassical economic theory is very elegant and very useful, but it cannot describe how a system is evolving. If we want to understand how patent systems work, we may not simply rely on understanding the economics of patent systems, there must be developed a structure of incentives that will continue to encourage people to innovate and transform solutions to solve new and different problems that evolve over time. What we would ideally like in a world that is dynamic, where change is going on both in the political system and in the economic system, is to have an adaptively efficient structure.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Introduction: The Kauffman Foundation Conference on Intellectual Property and Innovation
- Does Intellectual Monopoly Help Innovation?
- A Cautious Defense of Intellectual Oligopoly With Fringe Competition
- Evaluating the Economic Performance of Property Systems
- Copyright Abolition and Attribution
- A Rhetorical Response to Boldrin & Levine: Against Intellectual (Property) Extremism
- Watt, Again? Boldrin and Levine Still Exaggerate the Adverse Effect of Patents on the Progress of Steam Power
- Responding to the Challenges of "Against Intellectual Monopoly"
- A Recommendation on How to Intelligently Approach Emerging Problems in Intellectual Property Systems
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Introduction: The Kauffman Foundation Conference on Intellectual Property and Innovation
- Does Intellectual Monopoly Help Innovation?
- A Cautious Defense of Intellectual Oligopoly With Fringe Competition
- Evaluating the Economic Performance of Property Systems
- Copyright Abolition and Attribution
- A Rhetorical Response to Boldrin & Levine: Against Intellectual (Property) Extremism
- Watt, Again? Boldrin and Levine Still Exaggerate the Adverse Effect of Patents on the Progress of Steam Power
- Responding to the Challenges of "Against Intellectual Monopoly"
- A Recommendation on How to Intelligently Approach Emerging Problems in Intellectual Property Systems
