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Inventors and Pirates: Creative Activity and Intellectual Property Rights

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  • Herschel I. Grossman

Abstract

This paper analyzes how both the value of ideas created as well as the security of intellectual property rights result from the choices of potentially creative people either to engage in creative activity or to be pirates, and from decisions of people who are engaged in creative activity to allocate time and effort to the guarding of ideas from pirating. An important result is that, although the existence of a small number of geniuses causes a larger fraction of potentially creative people to choose to be pirates and, consequently, makes intellectual property rights less secure, the existence of a small number of geniuses, holding fixed the average level of talent, can result in a larger value of ideas being created. The paper also recognizes the difference between the private value and the social value of the security of intellectual property rights.

Suggested Citation

  • Herschel I. Grossman, 2000. "Inventors and Pirates: Creative Activity and Intellectual Property Rights," NBER Working Papers 7898, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7898
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    Cited by:

    1. Kolmar, Martin, 2005. "The contribution of Herschel I. Grossman to political economy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 802-814, December.
    2. Jonas Send, 2021. "Contest Copycats: Adversarial Duplication of Effort in Contests," Working Papers tax-mpg-rps-2021-17, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
    3. Fujii, Dmitri, 2009. "Who Wants To Be a Genius?," Panorama Económico, Escuela Superior de Economía, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, vol. 0(09), pages 7-54, segundo s.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital

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