This book takes a fresh look at the most dynamic area of American law today, comprising the fields of copyright, patent, trademark, trade secrecy, publicity rights, and misappropriation. Topics range from copyright in private letters to defensive patenting of business methods, from moral rights in the visual arts to the banking of trademarks, from the impact of the court of patent appeals to the management of Mickey Mouse. The history and political science of intellectual property law, the challenge of digitization, the many statutes and judge-made doctrines, and the interplay with antitrust principles are all examined. The treatment is both positive (oriented toward understanding the law as it is) and normative (oriented to the reform of the law). Previous analyses have tended to overlook the paradox that expanding intellectual property rights can effectively reduce the amount of new intellectual property by raising the creators' input costs. Those analyses have also failed to integrate the fields of intellectual property law. They have failed as well to integrate intellectual property law with the law of physical property, overlooking the many economic and legal-doctrinal parallels. This book demonstrates the fundamental economic rationality of intellectual property law, but is sympathetic to critics who believe that in recent decades Congress and the courts have gone too far in the creation and protection of intellectual property rights. Table of Contents: Introduction 1. The Economic Theory of Property 2. How to Think about Copyright 3. A Formal Model of Copyright 4. Basic Copyright Doctrines 5. Copyright in Unpublished Works 6. Fair Use, Parody, and Burlesque 7. The Economics of Trademark Law 8. The Optimal Duration of Copyrights and Trademarks 9. The Legal Protection of Postmodern Art 10. Moral Rights and the Visual Artists Rights Act 11. The Economics of Patent Law 12. The Patent Court: A Statistical Evaluation 13. The Economics of Trade Secrecy Law 14. Antitrust and Intellectual Property 15. The Political Economy of Intellectual Property Law Conclusion Acknowledgments Index Reviews of this book: Chicago law professor William Landes and his polymath colleague Richard Posner have produced a fascinating new book...[The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law] is a broad-ranging analysis of how intellectual property should and does work...Shakespeare's copying from Plutarch, Microsoft's incentives to hide the source code for Windows, and Andy Warhol's right to copyright a Brillo pad box as art are all analyzed, as is the question of the status of the all-bran cereal called 'All-Bran.' --Nicholas Thompson, New York Sun Reviews of this book: Landes and Posner, each widely respected in the intersection of law and economics, investigate the right mix of protection and use of intellectual property (IP)...This volume provides a broad and coherent approach to the economics and law of IP. The economics is important, understandable, and valuable. --R. A. Miller, Choice Intellectual property is the most important public policy issue that most policymakers don't yet get. It is America's most important export, and affects an increasingly wide range of social and economic life. In this extraordinary work, two of America's leading scholars in the law and economics movement test the pretensions of intellectual property law against the rationality of economics. Their conclusions will surprise advocates from both sides of this increasingly contentious debate. Their analysis will help move the debate beyond the simplistic ideas that now tend to dominate. --Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School, author of The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World An image from modern mythology depicts the day that Einstein, pondering a blackboard covered with sophisticated calculations, came to the life-defining discovery: Time = $$. Landes and Posner, in the role of that mythological Einstein, reveal at every turn how perceptions of economic efficiency pervade legal doctrine. This is a fascinating and resourceful book. Every page reveals fresh, provocative, and surprising insights into the forces that shape law. --Pierre N. Leval, Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit The most important book ever written on intellectual property. --William Patry, former copyright counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, Judiciary Committee Given the immense and growing importance of intellectual property to modern economies, this book should be welcomed, even devoured, by readers who want to understand how the legal system affects the development, protection, use, and profitability of this peculiar form of property. The book is the first to view the whole landscape of the law of intellectual property from a functionalist (economic) perspective. Its examination of the principles and doctrines of patent law, copyright law, trade secret law, and trademark law is unique in scope, highly accessible, and altogether greatly rewarding. --Steven Shavell, Harvard Law School, author of Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law
This book takes a fresh look at the most dynamic area of American law today, comprising the fields of copyright, patent, trademark, trade secrecy, publicity rights, and misappropriation. It demonstrates the fundamental economic rationality of intellectual property law, but is sympathetic to critics who believe that IP rights have gone too far.
The purchase of this ebook edition does not entitle you to receive access to the Connected eBook on CasebookConnect. You will need to purchase a new print book to get access to the full experience including: lifetime access to the online ebook with highlight, annotation, and search capabilities, plus an outline tool and other helpful resources. Law and Economics: Theory, Cases, and Other Materials is a comprehensive introduction to the subject area of law and economics, with stimulating in depth discussion of actual case law by two leading scholars in the field. It provides a clear description of the key points of law and economics across various substantive areas of law, combining the traditional approach to the study of law and economics with new important insights from behavioral economics and competing theories. Importantly, Law and Economics artfully introduces and connects theory to practice to provide a coherent picture rather than a patch-like studying experience. Using detailed case-notes, comments and examples, Law and Economics explains why future lawyers should care about economic analysis of the law and how economics can and should play a role in litigation and conflict resolution. This important new casebook not only makes law and economics accessible to students but also indubitably establishes the importance of law and economics in a globalized world. Highlights of the First Edition: Introduces students to basic tools (e.g., game theory and decision theory) and concepts (e.g., efficiency criteria) using simple and innovative methods Facilitates the understanding of complicated concepts by providing the theoretical backgrounds as well as clear explanations, examples, exercises, and comprehensive comments and notes that do not require any background in math or economics Allows readers to test their understanding by providing practice questions with full answers Carefully selected cases, with discussion emphasizing the economic rationales underlying decisions and demonstrating how these rationales impact decisions Marries the virtues of a textbook (explaining the theoretical underpinning of different economic notions and how they relate to different legal doctrines) to those of a casebook by tying concepts to actual decisions Adopts a modern approach that covers competing theories as they relate to specific decisions and theories Includes methodology chapters where the same methodology (e.g., decision making, game theory, supply and demand) is used to analyze different areas of the law, as well as subject matter chapters in which specific areas of the law (e.g., property) are analyzed using different methodologies A modular structure, allowing the professor to pick and cover materials in almost any order, to skip certain materials and to focus on court decisions, the theory, or both Professors and students will benefit from: The use of alternative intuitive methods to explain theories The use of simple algebra to teach the most complex subjects The artful combination of theory with a practical approach that ties the economic concepts (including game theory and decision theory) to specific subject matters, legal rules and specific decisions In-depth discussion of decisions and how they could they be explained or argued differently in light of the theoretical concepts reviewed The use of summary boxes to recap complicated concepts Fantastic notes and practical questions following cases
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