NEWS

 

2008

2008 Compass Prize

View submission information for the 2008 Compass Lexecon Prize. The submission deadline is February 29, 2008.

 

2007

2007 Compass Prize

See the 2007 Compass Prize winning papers.

 

Conference on the Economics of Competition and Innovation

Review Papers
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Does our patent system promote and protect innovation?  Or do “patent trolls” and treacherous “patent thickets”, and a flawed regulatory system, impede innovation?  The Competition Policy Center invited 35 scholars to a conference on the Economics of Competition and Innovation to explore just those questions.

Held at Alumni House on October 26-7, the conference produced lively discussion and an excellent set of papers—all of which are available on-line at http://iber.berkeley.edu/cpc/Conference/papers.html?action=login&db_name=CPC2007

Keynote speaker Brad Smith, Senior Vice-President and General Counsel for Microsoft, stressed the historical similarities between innovation in the US today and during the 1870s and 80s, a period when new technologies transformed the American economy.  He argued that then as now, industry, Congress, and the public each gradually modified its approach to the patent regime so as to enable the new economy to surge ahead.

Even a quick perusal of the papers reveals the extraordinary reach of the patent system.  In addition to exploring the role of intellectual property rights and their enforcement  in various industries, there were papers that ranged from how patent reform can affect technology transfer for developing countries to what factors lead inventors to patent their inventions.  In a closing discussion, panelists were offered the role of “patent czar” and asked what aspects of the patent system were amenable to fixing, and what fixes they would propose.

The Berkeley contingent was headed by its corps of former Deputy Assistant Attorney’s General for Antitrust—CPC Chair Richard Gilbert, Joseph Farrell (Economics), and Carl Shapiro and Michael Katz (Business).  One new face was. Stuart Graham —a UC Berkeley PhD and winner of the first CPC Dissertation Award in 2004, now an assistant professor at Georgia Tech.