The Economics of Innovation and Intellectual Property

Course Outline: This course provides a helicopter tour of the economics of innovation and intellectual property (with a focus on intellectual property). The objective of the course is to offer students a (very) broad brushed, introduction to some of the most topical and relevant (from a business and policy perspective) and/or interesting (from an academic perspective) topics surrounding innovation and intellectual property. The course covers in particular recent events related to intellectual property, such as the debate on software patents, “patent wars”, patent litigation involving patent trolls, standard essential patents, and the importance of patents for green technologies. The course material varies substantially across topics; it is both theoretical and empirical and cuts across a number of disciplines, most importantly law and economics.

• Class 1: Introduction
• Class 2: R&D and spillovers
• Class 3: Trademarks and Brands 
• Class 4: Trademark squatting 
• Class 5: Copyright 
• Class 6: Secrecy 
• Class 7: Patents 
• Class 8: Incentives for innovation: prizes and awards
• Class 9: Patents and pharmaceuticals 
• Class 10: Patents and "Green Tech" 
• Class 11: Patents and Economic Development 
• Class 12: Strategic patenting and patent thickets 
• Class 13: Software patents
• Class 14: Markets for Technology
• Class 15: Technology standards and standard-relevant patents 
• Class 16: Patent Litigation and Enforcement
• Class 17: Patent Trolls and mass aggregators 
• Class 18: The sharing of intellectual property, joint patenting, patent pools and patent commons