Mitigating 'anticommons' harms to research in science and technology
David, Paul A. (2011). Mitigating 'anticommons' harms to research in science and technology. UNU-MERIT.
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Report
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Author David, Paul A. Title Mitigating 'anticommons' harms to research in science and technology Publication Date 2011 Publisher UNU-MERIT Abstract There are three analytically distinct layers of the phenomenon that has been labeled 'the anticommons' and indicted as a potential impediment to innovation resulting from patenting and enforcement of IPR obtained on academic research results. This paper distinguishes among 'search costs', 'transactions costs', and 'multiple marginalization' effects in the pricing of licenses for commercial use of IP, and examines the distinctive resource allocation problems arising from each when exclusion rights over research inputs are distributed among independent owners. Where information use-rights are gross complements (either in production or consumption), multiple marginalization—seen here to be the core of the 'anticommons' – is likely to result in extreme forms of 'royalty stacking' that can pose serious impediments to R&D projects. The practical consequences, particularly for exploratory scientific research (contrasted with commercially-oriented R&D) are seen from a heuristic analysis of the effects of distributed ownership of scientific and technical database rights. A case is presented for the contractual construction of 'research resource commons' designed as efficient IPR pools, as the preferable response to the anticommons. Keyword Anticommons
R&D
Multiple marginalization
IPR licensing
Patent hold-ups
Royalty stacking
Distributed scientific databases
Copyright collections societies
Contractual commonsJEL L24
O31
O34
O38Copyright Holder UNU-MERIT Copyright Year 2011 -
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