Intellectual property and optimal copyright protection |
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| Authors: | Christian Koboldt |
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| Institution: | (1) Center for the Study of Law and Economics, Department of Economics, Universität des Saarlandes, Germany |
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| Abstract: | Copyright protection, or more generally, intellectual property rights, can be regarded as a means for the stimulation of production of information goods. This paper analyses the basic problem of production and dissemination of information and the role of copyright protection as an incentive for the producers of creative works. Using a simple model, it is shown that not only a cause for limiting the extent of copyright protection does exist, but that also an argument for a minimum level of protection can be found. Even optimal copyright protection, given the restriction that production and dissemination of information goods has to be co-ordinated by a market mechanism, however, does not lead to a first-best (allocatively efficient) solution. Hence, the judgment that copyright protection is the best solution to the basic problem can be grounded only on a comparative institutional approach.Indeed, one has ample reason to despair of finding a legal tenet that governs the rights of authors and artists. There exists no legal principle by which the state is forced to grant to authors a right in their creation. They cannot claim any right thereupon. This is not to say that the state shall not award such a right. On the contrary, there is every reason to treat them like the most favoured workers, as they deliver a work that is more robust than ashlar, and bring food that does not decay... |
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| Keywords: | Copyright intellectual property economic analysis of law |
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