IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlawec/doi10.1086-697400.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Role of Courts in Technology Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Sepehr Shahshahani

Abstract

When established firms sue a newcomer who has developed a technology that threatens their business, and the copyright and patent laws are unclear as to whether the challenged use is illegal, what are the welfare consequences of various judicial rulings? This question is usually answered by conceptualizing the court's decision as the final choice of policy. But that is misleading because the court's decision merely forms the baseline from which Congress, lobbied by interest groups, enacts the final policy. I present a formal model that captures this dynamic context. The model shows that the court's optimal decision is to rule for the resource-constrained party, which is often the newcomer, even when the opposite ruling would be preferable if the court were the final policy maker. The model's logic is illustrated by case studies of Supreme Court decisions on copyright law.

Suggested Citation

  • Sepehr Shahshahani, 2018. "The Role of Courts in Technology Policy," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(1), pages 37-61.
  • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/697400
    DOI: 10.1086/697400
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/697400
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/697400
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/697400?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Freilich, Janet & Shahshahani, Sepehr, 2023. "Measuring follow-on innovation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(9).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/697400. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.