The tragedy of the anticommons is a type of coordination breakdown, in which a commons does not emerge, even when general access to resources or infrastructure would be a social good. It is a mirror-image of the older concept of tragedy of the commons, in which numerous rights holders' combined use exceeds the capacity of a resource and depletes or destroys it. The "tragedy of the anticommons" covers a range of coordination failures, including patent thickets and submarine patents. Overcoming these breakdowns can be difficult, but there are assorted means, including eminent domain, laches, patent pools, or other licensing organizations.
Jeffrey David Sachs is an American economist and public policy analyst, professor at Columbia University, where he was former director of The Earth Institute. He is known for his work on sustainable development, economic development, and the fight to end poverty.
Douglas Howard Ginsburg is an American lawyer, jurist, and academic serving as a senior U.S. circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He is also a professor of law at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School.
Thomas Alexander Aleinikoff is Director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School in New York City. He was a law professor and dean at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. He served, from 2010 to 2015, as the Deputy High Commissioner in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, Switzerland. He was most recently a visiting professor of law and Huo Global Policy Initiative Research Fellow, Columbia Global Policy Initiative.
Andrei Shleifer is a Russian-American economist and Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1991. Shleifer was awarded the biennial John Bates Clark Medal in 1999 for his seminal works in three fields: corporate finance, the economics of financial markets, and the economics of transition.
Saul Levmore is the William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of Law, and former Dean of the University of Chicago Law School.
Spencer A. Overton is an American lawyer, President of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and law professor at George Washington University Law School. He is a leading election law scholar, and is a tenured Professor of Law at George Washington University.
Thomas Byrne Edsall is an American journalist and academic. He is best known for his weekly opinion column for The New York Times, Previously, he worked as a reporter for The Providence Journal and for The Baltimore Sun, and as a correspondent for The New Republic. In addition, he spent 25 years covering national politics for the Washington Post. He held the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Chair at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism until 2014.
Cynthia Estlund is the Catherine A. Rein Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law.
James E. Krier is the Earl Warren DeLano Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. His teaching and research interests are primarily in the fields of property, contracts, and law and economics, and he teaches or has taught courses on contracts, property, trusts and estates, behavioral law and economics, and pollution policy.
Samuel Aaron Moyn is the Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University, previously the Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and Professor of History at Yale University, which he joined in July 2017. Previously, he was a professor of history at Columbia University for thirteen years and a professor of history and of law at Harvard University for three years. His research interests are in modern European intellectual history, with special interests in France and Germany, political and legal thought, historical and critical theory, and Jewish studies.
Legal scholars, economists, activists, policymakers, industries, and trade organizations have held differing views on patents and engaged in contentious debates on the subject. Critical perspectives emerged in the nineteenth century that were especially based on the principles of free trade. Contemporary criticisms have echoed those arguments, claiming that patents block innovation and waste resources that could otherwise be used productively, and also block access to an increasingly important "commons" of enabling technologies, apply a "one size fits all" model to industries with differing needs, that is especially unproductive for industries other than chemicals and pharmaceuticals and especially unproductive for the software industry. Enforcement by patent trolls of poor quality patents has led to criticism of the patent office as well as the system itself. Patents on pharmaceuticals have also been a particular focus of criticism, as the high prices they enable puts life-saving drugs out of reach of many people. Alternatives to patents have been proposed, such Joseph Stiglitz's suggestion of providing "prize money" as a substitute for the lost profits associated with abstaining from the monopoly given by a patent.
Richard Abraham Primus is an American legal scholar. He currently teaches United States constitutional law at the University of Michigan Law School, where he is Theodore J. St. Antoine Collegiate Professor of Law. In 2008, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on the relationship between history and constitutional interpretation.
John Francis Manning is an American legal scholar who serves as the 13th Dean of Harvard Law School. On March 14, 2024, Manning was appointed as the interim provost of Harvard University, and is on a leave of absence from his deanship. He was previously the Bruce Bromley Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (HLS), where he is a scholar of administrative and constitutional law.
Susan P. Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She served as President Barack Obama's Special Assistant for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (2009) and is a columnist for WIRED. She is a former board member of ICANN, the founder of OneWebDay, and a legal scholar. Her research focuses on telecommunications and information law.
William Elliott Butler was a jurist and educator at the John Edward Fowler Distinguished Professor of Law, Dickinson School of Law, Pennsylvania State University (2005-) and Professorial Research Associate, School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of London (2006-), and Emeritus Professor of Comparative Law in the University of London (2005-). He was an authority on the legal systems of Russia, other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and Mongolia. He was also involved in the fields of public and private international law. He is currently 83 years old and has written 4 books about the Russian Law.
W. Russell Neuman is Professor of Media Technology, NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and Professor (Emeritus), Communication Studies, University of Michigan. From 2001 to 2013, Dr. Neuman was the John Derby Evans Professor of Media Technology at the University of Michigan. Neuman received a Ph.D. And M.A. At the University of California, Berkeley Department of Sociology as well as a B.A. from Cornell University's Department of Government. He has an extensive teaching and research career at Yale University, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan. He is one of the founding faculty members at MIT Media Lab and with Ithiel de Sola Pool, MIT's Research Program on Communication Policy. From 2001-2003 he served as a Senior Policy Analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy working in the areas of information technology, broadband policy as well as biometrics and international security.
The International Law Institute, also known as the ILI, was founded as part of Georgetown University in 1955. The ILI provides training and technical assistance for the legal, economic and financial problems of developing countries and emerging economies. Since 1983, the ILI has been an independent, non-profit educational institution serving government officials, legal and business professionals and scholars from its headquarters in Washington, D.C. To date, the ILI and its global affiliates have trained over 39,400 officials, managers, and practitioners- from 186 countries- since it held its first seminar in 1971.
Doug Guthrie is an American academic administrator, sociologist, and China scholar. He is currently professor of global leadership and director of China initiatives at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at The Arizona State University. He was previously the dean of The George Washington University School of Business, and professor of management and sociology and director of executive education and NYU's Stern School of Business. He has also served as a visiting professor of management at the business schools of Columbia, Stanford, Harvard, Emory, and INSEAD and as director of the Business Institutions Initiative at the Social Science Research Council.
Steven Paul Croley is an American lawyer, Chief Policy Officer and General Counsel of Ford Motor Company and the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor. His practice areas include law reform, legal policy, regulation, oversight, and political law, with special emphasis on energy and the environment. His academic research and writing focus on administrative law, civil procedure, good government, and regulatory policy.
