This paper examines the welfare tradeoff between patent and antitrust law. Since patent and antitrust law have contradictory goals, the question that naturally arises is how one should choose between the two in instances where there is a conflict. One sensible approach to choosing between two...

This paper derives optimal remedies for patent infringement, examining damages awards and injunctions. The fundamental optimality condition that applies to both awards and injunctions equates the marginal static cost of intellectual property protection with the marginal “dynamic” benefit...

There are three essential sources of uncertainty in the patent system: perceived uncertainty due to selective sampling (“statistical artefact uncertainty”), inherent uncertainty, and strategic uncertainty. It is only the strategic uncertainty source that should be of concern to reformers....

In Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics the Supreme Court granted greater discretion to lower courts to enhance damages for patent infringement. This paper takes a normative approach to patent infringement damages. Its underlying premise is that the goal of a damages regime should be to...

This paper examines a simple and old question: should innovators receive a patent or a prize? The answer I provide is equally simple: they should receive both. The literature on patents versus prizes has proceeded mostly under the assumption that there should be a choice between a regime of...