A New Tool for Analyzing Intellectual Property

This piece reviews Economic and Legal Dimensions, which presents a pragmatic economic theory about the proper remedies in intellectual property cases. The book shows in a number of areas how remedies play a crucial role in defining intellectual property rights, and how to improve the law. The first part of the review presents the authors' general theory. The second part tests how the theory succeeds in explaining the existing law on remedies in intellectual property. The third part analyzes how the theory could be used to bring considerable clarity to murky areas such as standing to sue, liability standards, measurement of damages, and potential defendants. It also discuss the nature and role of the work within intellectual property scholarship. The fourth part seeks to extend the book's analysis to two of the more pressing problems in patent law. It shows how adoption of an independent creation defense could considerably reduce the problems of poor patent quality and uncertain patent claim interpretation. Changes in one area of intellectual property (such as remedies) can have broader effects on the economic role of intellectual property