VII Winter Workshop on Economics and Philosophy (2007)

Do patents promote innovation? And copyright creativity?

A workshop organized by the the Urrutia Elejalde Foundation at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
Madrid, 21-22 May 2007

Director: Michele Boldrin (WUStL)

Coordinators: Jesús Zamora & David Teira (UNED)

In collaboration with Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología   .....{Updated: May 20, 2007}

Speakers

M. Boldrin, E.Bustos & R. Feltrero, D.K. Levine, S. Liebowitz, R. Marimon, R. Stallman, E. Valauskas

Contributed papers by:

Francisco Alcalá & Miguel González-Maestre, Soma Dey, Erika Färnstrand Damsgaard,
G. Llanes & S. Trento, Giovanni B. Ramello, Susan A. Russell

 

Abstracts| Poster | Final schedule | Registration | Conference venue

Is copyright a good idea? How about patents? From an economic perspective, it is copies of works that matter, and not abstract ideas. Copies of works are property in the ordinary sense, and are protected by ordinary laws against theft. Patents and copyright, then, do not grant property rights, but rather a monopoly over all copies of the original work.

On the one hand, it is important to recognize that creating a new commodity or production process, a new book or a new medicine, requires producing a large indivisible unit, and because of this indivisibility, the ordinary functioning of the market may not provide adequate incentives. There is a large fixed cost, and a small marginal cost of making copies: if copies are sold at the marginal cost, the fixed cost will never be recouped. On the other hand, it is important to recognize that the creator has a "first mover" advantage in profiting from his creation, that capacity is limited and imitation is never costlessly. The creator is the only owner of the first copy: he/she has opportunities to profit before imitation takes place.

There is a conflict here, due to a profoundly different conceptualization of property, and of how the economic system works or should work with respect to innovation and creativity. But there is also a different assessment of the available data: do we obtain more useful medicines with a patent regime than without? How about books and software when copyright is available? What's the historical evidence? What's the cross-country and cross-regimes evidence? A consensus is far from being reached; in the meanwhile laws are passed, cases are brought to court, judges rule, international treaties are written, and the intellectual debate rages on.

Is this conflict resolvable by rational discourse and empirical evidence? Are there only mutually incompatible models, or is there a middle ground both sides can accept? Are we facing theft, when someone rejects patents or copyright, or is it instead just economic competition at work?

Philosophical, legal and economic traditions conflict with each other, asserting on the one extreme that "intellectual property" is a well defined concept and right, and on the other that "intellectual property" is a nonsense. By the same token, some see patents and copyright as an exercise in rent-seeking and monopoly power, while other deem either of them, or both, a necessary tool for economic progress. In the quadrangle so delimited new arguments are being advanced to face the challenges of a digital and globalized world. We are sailing new waters, and we need a new map.

The goal of the conference is to provide a forum for furthering our understanding of some of these issues.

1. Patents, how they work in theory and in practice
2. Copyright, how it works in theory and in practice
3. Intellectual Property: is this a useful concept, from a legal, philosophical and economic point of view?

Registration

Registration is free. Yet, you should fill and return the following form before May 10th. For more information contact David Teira (dteira {at} fsof.uned.es]