The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law [Hardcover]

William M. Landes (Author), The Honorable Richard A. Posner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 28, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0674012046 | ISBN-13: 978-0674012042

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.

(20040401)

Editorial Reviews

Review

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

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 )

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 )

About the Author

William M. Landes is the Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School.

Richard A. Posner is Circuit Judge, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (November 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674012046
• ISBN-13: 978-0674012042
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.8 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #611,746 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The starting point for IP economic policy justification, February 16, 2009

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This review is from: The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law (Hardcover)

Probably the best starting point for understanding the positive and negative economic effects of intellectual property protection. The book is a fairly easy read assuming an academic exposure to economics 101 and a working knowledge of IP law. I read it in two days over thanksgiving vacation as part preparation for a fall patents exam. The book covers the basic economic benefits of IP protection - incentive, information, reduction in search costs, etc. vs. the economic costs - rent seeking, transaction costs, dead weight loss, etc. Good introductory reading for law students, legislative aids, and aspiring lobbyists from the medical-industrial complex.

The book has three very slight weaknesses, inherent in the topic it covers. First, the book admits early on that its own analysis is something of an over-simplification. Unwarranted self-criticism. A better "criticism" is that the real world fits the exception more often than the general rules, and specific situations will most often require a deeper analysis. Lifesaving pharmaceuticals, internet postings, and talking dog collar inventions are distinct situations and really just beg distinct economic analyses.

The second weakness is the assumption that the primary justification for IP law is/should be economic efficiency, superceding moral rights or property rights. Overall, sustains the status quo thinking that the steelworker, the scientist, the engineers, the farmers are just economic units on a global chessboard - not humans, and not part of a communities social fabric. Ignore at your own peril.

Third criticism, not nearly a strong enough position on the horrific transaction and litigation costs associated with the patent system in the U.S. If we should learn anything from the current financial crisis, is that you are remiss not to sound the alarm loud enough when a system has become expensive, unweildy, and unsustainable. To be fair, significant treatment of these costs is somewhat outside the books thesis of providing simple economic analysis of IP protection; and, transaction costs are covered in th text. Nontheless, it seems to ignore the elephant in the room to not give a more in depth treatment of this subject.