Procuring knowledge / Stephen M. Maurer, Suzanne Scotchmer -- Firm strategies and trends in patent litigation in the United States / Deepak Somaya -- Crossing the great divide : using adverse possession to resolve conflicts between the antitrust and intellectual property regimes / Constance E. Bagley, Gavin Clarkson -- Incomplete contracting and the structure of R&D joint venture contracts / Suzanne E. Majewski, Dean V. Williamson -- Will MP3 downloads annihilate the record industry? The evidence so far / Stan J. Liebowitz -- Strategies that work when property rights don't / Bharat Anand, Alexander Galetovic -- Economic perspectives on open source / Josh Lerner, Jean Tirole -- Submarines and technological innovation : U.S. continuation patenting in software and biotechnology technologies in the 1980s and 1990s / Stuart J.H Graham, David C. Mowery -- Introduction / Gary D. Libecap.

The papers in this volume represent some of the leading work on intellectual property. They address the question of how to create incentives to develop new technologies and how to protect those technologies once developed from theft. They also ask when valuable property might be developed even under weak ownership conditions. Other papers address how firms balance the trade offs in considering costly patent litigation and they examine the antitrust implications. Although issues of intellectual property rights would seem to be ones of interest only to obscure groups of academics and lawyers, they have become topics of everyday discussion among the regular population.Alleged copyright infringements by people downloading music from the internet and accompanying threats of prosecution as well as charges of strategic patenting to harm competitors in recent high profile antitrust cases have placed intellectual property into public and political debate. The incentives provided by secure property rights for promoting research and development, investment, production, and exchange are well known. These are the major arguments for patents, copyrights and other forms of intellectual property.

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