Kaizenlog

—————————————+
| Economic Gridlock – the Invisible Cost of IP Law             |
|   from the let’s-all-say-it-together dept.                         |
|   posted by timothy on Sunday August 10, @11:22 (Businesses)       |
|   http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/10/1458231 |
+——————————————————————–+

smellsofbikes writes “This week’s New Yorker magazine has a financial
article, ‘[0]The Permission Problem,’ discussing the hidden cost of
patent, trademark and copyright laws. It’s a subject anyone here already
knows well, but he brings up two interesting points: 1) He uses the term
‘tragedy of the anticommons.’ Instead of depletion of a shared resource,
this describes under-use of hoarded resources: areas that can’t be
explored because they’re encumbered by patent/copyright issues. As he
points out, the result of this is an invisible loss: drugs not made,
software not written. The loss is impossible to quantify and difficult to
see. I like the term ‘tragedy of the anticommons’ because it encapsulates
a long-winded explanation into a pithy, memorable phrase that will stick
with people unfamiliar with the topic. 2) He also cites [1]a study by Ben
Depoorter and Sven Vanneste that discusses why anticommons effects are
seen, beyond mere competition. Individual right holders value their
contribution to the overall project as a significant fraction of the
project value, so if there are more than three or four right holders,
their perceived value can far exceed the total value of the project,
making it uneconomical.”

Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/08/10/1458231

Links:
0. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2008/08/11/080811ta_talk_surowiecki
1. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=592166