All of Arjun Narayan's Comments + Replies

Why did Intellectual Ventures's thesis about patents fail?

My basic thesis on why IV failed is that the property rights are terribly defined in intellectual property in general, since pretty much every single case has to be adjudicated by the judicial system, which means that markets fail for standard 'tragedy of the commons' reasons (in the strict economic model sense, not just the commonly applied metaphor). It's as if land rights to houses were defined with the specificity of "the 3rd house after you turn the street corner, from about where the road bends for about twenty paces". The entire system begs for expe... (read more)