VII WW on Economics and Philosophy (2007) Do patents promote innovation? And copyright creativity? A workshop organized by the the Urrutia Elejalde Foundation at the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia Madrid, 21-22 May 2007 Director: Michele Boldrin (WUStL) Coordinators: Jesus Zamora & David Teira (UNED) Preliminary list of speakers Michele Boldrin, David K. Levine, Stan Liebowitz, Ramon Marimon, Douglass North, Richard Stallman, Edward Valauskas Call for papers (Deadline: Feb 28th 2007 | Acceptance: March 15th 2007) Is copyright a good idea? How about patents? From an economic perspective, it is copies of works that matter, and not abstract ideas. Copies of works are property in the ordinary sense, and are protected by ordinary laws against theft. Patents and copyright, then, do not grant property rights, but rather a monopoly over all copies of the original work On the one hand, it is important to recognize that creating a new commodity or production process, a new book or a new medicine, requires producing a large indivisible unit, and because of this indivisibility, the ordinary functioning of the market may not provide adequate incentives. There is a large fixed cost, and a small marginal cost of making copies: if copies are sold at the marginal cost, the fixed cost will never be recouped. On the other hand, it is important to recognize that the creator has a "first mover" advantage in profiting from his creation, that capacity is limited and imitation is never costlessly. The creator is the only owner of the first copy and of the initial productive capacity: he/she has opportunities to profit before imitation takes place. There is a conflict here, a conflict due to a profoundly different conceptualization of property, and of how the economic system works or should work with respect to innovation and creativity. But there is also a different assessment of the available data: do we obtain more useful medicines with a patent regime than without? How about books and software when copyright is available? What's the historical evidence? What's the cross-country and cross-regimes evidence? A consensus is far from being reached; in the meanwhile laws are passed, cases are brought to court, judges rule, international treaties are written, and the intellectual debate rages on. Is this conflict resolvable by rational discourse and empirical evidence? Are there only mutually incompatible models, or is there a middle ground both sides can accept? Are we facing theft, when someone rejects patents or copyright, or is it instead just economic competition at work? Philosophical traditions, based, on natural law or utilitarian arguments, conflict with each other, asserting one that "intellectual property" is a well defined concept and right, and the other that it is nonsense and pure exercise in rent-seeking and monopoly power. Legal scholars are equally divided, especially when it comes to the social value, not to speak of the legal coherence, or recent extensions of patents and copyright to areas of economic endeavor where they had previously been totally absent. We are sailing new waters, and we need a new map. The goal of the conference is to provide a forum for furthering our understanding of these areas of research through the presentation and discussion of some of the best work produced around the world, and the contribution of personal reflections by some of the main players in the debate over patents and copyright. More precisely, the proposal is to focus the conference on three sets of "subtopics" of the general issue as just defined: 1. Patents, how they work in theory and in practice 2. Copyright, how it works in theory and in practice 3. Intellectual Property: is this a useful concept, from a legal, philosophical and economic point of view? Send a 1000 words abstract before Feb. 28th to Michele Boldrin (mboldrin [at] artsci.wustl.edu). Acceptance will be notified by March 15th. Further information: http://www.urrutiaelejalde.org/WinterWorkshop/2007.html David Teira