Publication Date
2016
Journal
Indiana Law Journal
Abstract
All creativity and innovation build on existing ideas. Authors and inventors copy, adapt, improve, interpret, and refine the ideas that have come before them. The central task of intellectual property (IP) law is regulating this sequential innovation to ensure that initial creators and subsequent creators receive the appropriate sets of incentives. Although many scholars have applied the tools of economic analysis to consider whether IP law is successful in encouraging cumulative innovation, that work has rested on a set of untested assumptions about creators’ behavior. This Article reports four novel creativity experiments that begin to test those assumptions. In particular, we study how creators decide whether to copy, or “borrow,” from existing ideas or to innovate around them.
Volume
91
First Page
1251
Publisher
Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Keywords
copyright, patent, doctrine of equivalents, market
Disciplines
Law
Recommended Citation
Stefan Bechtold, Christopher Buccafusco & Christopher J. Sprigman,
Innovation Heuristics: Experiments on Sequential Creativity in Intellectual Property,
91
Ind. L.J.
1251
(2016).
https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/faculty-articles/319
