This handbook chapter argues that part of the controversy over intellectual property stems from inadequacies in the economic theory of property rights. Property is assumed in both law and economics and in New Institutional Economics to be any expectation of being able to act upon or derive value...

In many situations legal systems use ambiguous standards and moral language in instructing people to behave. In the realm of the common law, much of this ambiguous, morally inflected legal component is associated with “equity.” In civil law systems, something similar goes under the banner of...