Workshop & Lecture Series on the Law & Economics of Innovation

The Workshop & Lecture Series on the Law & Economics of Innovation has been held every fall semester since 2008.

Former guests were:

Fall 2023

• Monika Schnitzer, LMU Munich: "How Antitrust Can Spur Innovation: ​Bell Labs and the 1956 Consent Decree" and "The Breakup of Bell and Its Impact on US Innovation"
• Christopher Yoo, Pennsylvania: "Big Data and Competition Law: Lessons from Innovation Markets" and "An Economic Analysis of the Right to Be Forgotten"
• Christopher Potts, Stanford: "Retrieval-Augmented Language Models for More Reliable Web Search" and "Achieving Faithful, Human-Interpretable Explanations of AI Models"
• Paul Ohm, Georgetown: "Friction-in-Design: Making Technology Less Harmful and More Supportive of Human Values" and "Focusing on Fine-Tuning: New Pathways for Fixing What is Wrong with Generative AI"
• Kevin Davis, NYU: "Corporate Liability for Cross-Border Bribery" and "Did the Global South Have Their Say on EU Supply Chain Regulation?"

Fall 2022

• Saul Levmore, Chicago: "SPACs, PIPEs, and Common Investors" and "Fractured Majorities"
• Henry Smith, Harvard: "Putting the Equity Back into Intellectual Property Remedies" and "A Network Model of Legal Relations"
  
• Ralf Martin, Imperial College London: "Efficient Industrial Policy for Innovation: Standing on the Shoulders of Hidden Giants" and "Environmental Preferences and Technological Choices: Is Market Competition Clean or Dirty?"
  
• Eric Posner, Chicago: "Horizontal Collusion and Parallel Wage-Setting in Labor Markets"
  
• Sandra Wachter, Oxford: "Me, Myself, and AI: How to Survive in a World Ruled by Algorithms" and "What if Using the Wrong Browser Costs You Your Job? AI Created Groups Under the Law"
  
• Jonathan Mayer, Princeton: "Responding to Misinformation: What Works?" and "Toward Behavioral Antitrust"

Fall 2021

• Tom Grad, Copenhagen Business School: "Incentives in Online Platforms" and "When Rivalry Helps and When it Hurts: The Effects of Rivalry on Performance"
• Nicholson Price, Michigan: "New Innovation Models in Medical AI" and "Humans in the Loop"
• Paul Heald, Illinois: "The Cost of Copyright: Comparative Empirical Findings" and "An Economic Analysis of Copyright Reversion Legislation"
  
• Laura Pedraza-Fariña, Northwestern: "Sociological Approaches to Innovation and Their Implications for Patent Law and Policy" and "The Ghost in the Patent System: Why Courts Struggle to Define Patent Law’s “Ordinary Artisan” and How A Network Approach Can Fix It"
  
• Vincent Lefrere, Mines-Télécom: "The Impact of the GDPR on Content Providers" and "Privacy and Children: What Drives Digital Data Protection for Very Young Children?"
  
• Erina Ytsma, Carnegie Mellon: "Effort and Selection Effects of Performance Pay in Knowledge Creation" and "Lone Stars or Constellations? The Impact of Performance Pay on The Distribution of Academics"
  

Fall 2020

• Saul Levmore, Chicago: "Competing Algorithms for Law: Sentencing, Admissions, and Employment"
  
• Tobias Salz, MIT: "The Effect of Privacy Regulation on the Data Industry: Empirical Evidence from GDPR"
  
• Luis Aguiar, University of Zurich: "Platforms, Power, and Promotion: Evidence from Spotify Playlists"
  
• Melissa F. Wasserman, Texas: "Errors at the Patent Office and What to Do About It" and "A Prescription for Rising Drug Prices: Patent Office Reform"
  
• Renato Nazzini, King's College London: "Global FRAND Litigation between Conflict and Convergence?" and "Competition Policy and Big Tech: Do We Need a Rethink?"
  
• Alessandro Acquisti, Carnegie Mellon: " Secrets and Likes: The Drive for Privacy and the Difficulty of Achieving It in the Digital Age" and "Hiring Discrimination via Online Social Networks"
  
• Lee Fleming, Berkeley: "The Agglomeration Advantage of Urban Inventors: Evidence from Inventor Deaths"
  

Fall 2019

• Matthew Kugler, Northwestern: "From Identification to Identity Theft: Public Perceptions of Biometric Privacy Harms" and "Protecting Energy Privacy"
• Christopher Buccafusco, Cardozo: "Intellectual Property and the Promotion of Happiness" and "Incentivizing Accessible Design"
• Michal Gal, University of Haifa: "3D Challenges: Ensuring Competition and Innovation in 3D Printing" and "The Case for Limiting Private Excessive Pricing Litigation"
• Christopher Sprigman, NYU: "Copyright and Creative Incentives: What We Know (and Don’t)" and "The Paradox of Privacy Regulation: How Law Meant to Protect Privacy Can Erode It"
• Raphael Zingg, Waseda University: "Patent Examiners and the Citation Bias in Innovation"
  
• Benjamin Jones, Northwestern: "Being Innovative in the 21st Century" and "The Social Returns to R&D"
  

Fall 2018

• Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Stanford: "Innovation Policy Pluralism" and "How Do Patent Incentives Affect University Researchers?"
• Winfried Menninghaus, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics: "Poetry, Slogans, Commercial Ads: The Nature and Powers of Poetic Language"
• Sabine Süsstrunk, EPFL Laussanne: "Vision, Imaging, and Machine Learning: Fact and Fancy"
• Sadao Nagaoka, Tokyo: "Making the Patent Scope Consistent with the Invention: Evidence from Japan" and "Does Grace Period Promote Knowledge Spillover?: Evidence from Japan"
• Neil Gandal, Tel Aviv: "Economic Research on the Relationship between Network Structure and Performance" and "Network-Mediated Knowledge Spillovers in ICT/Information Security"
• Daniel Gross, Harvard: "Information Blackout: The Effects of the USPTO Patent Secrecy Program in World War II on U.S. Invention" and "The Ties that Bind: Railroad Gauge Standards, Collusion, and Internal Trade in the 19th Century U.S."
• Michael Frakes, Duke: "Irrational Ignorance at the Patent Office and Knowledge Spillovers" and "Learning in the Workplace: Evidence from the U.S. Patent Office"
  

Fall 2017

• Krishna Gummadi, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems: "Discrimination in Human vs. Machine Decision Making"
• Stephen Haber, Stanford: "The Fallacies of Patent Holdup Theory and Patent Trolls or Patent Elves?"
• Hanns Ullrich, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition, Munich: "The European Union's Patent System After the Brexit: Unitary Protection Everywhere" and "Protecting Patents Beyond Their Limits"
• Mark Schankerman, London School of Economics: "Patent Rights, Incentives and Cumulative Innovation" and "Screening for Patent Quality: Examination, Fees and the Courts"
• Ufuk Akcigit, Chicago, The Rise of American Ingenuity: Innovation and Inventors of the Golden Age" and "Innovation and Trade Policy in a Globalized World"
• Florencia Marotta-Wurgler, New York University: "Do FTC Privacy Enforcement Actions Matter? Compliance Before and After US-EU Safe Harbor Agreement Actions" and "Learning in Standard Form Contracts: Theory and Evidence"
• Henry Smith, Harvard: "Property as Platform: Coordinating Standards for Technological Innovation" and "Governing Intellectual Property"
  

Fall 2016

• Bernt Hugenholtz, Amsterdam: "Hyperlinking after GS Media: is the World Wide Web coming to an end in the EU?" and "Money in the Bank or Pie in the Sky? Remuneration Rights as an Alternative to Copyright Enforcement Online"
• Bhaven Sampat, Columbia: "Secondary Pharmaceutical Patenting in the U.S." and "The Globalization of Pharmaceutical Patenting"
• David Schwartz, Northwestern: "Heterogeneity Among Patent Owners in Litigation: An Empirical Analysis of Case Progression, Settlement, and Adjudication" and "An Empirical Analysis of the Litigation Process: Evidence from Patent Law"
• Aaron Shaw, Northwestern and Benjamin Mako Hill, Washington: "The Hidden Costs of Requiring Accounts Online: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Peer Production" and "The Wikipedia Adventure: Field Evaluation of an Interactive Tutorial for Newcomers to an Online Community"
• Ben Depoorter, UC Hastings: "Copyright Alert Enforcement: Six Strikes & Privacy Harms" and "Claiming Willfulness: Statutory Awards by the Numbers"
• Luis Cabral, NYU: "Industry Agreements and Innovation Incentives" and "Dominant Firms and Innovation Incentives"

Fall 2015

• Armin Schmutzler, University of Zurich: "Designing Institutions for Diversity"
• Scott Hemphill, NYU: "Disruptive Monopolists" and "The Less-Restrictive-Alternatives Shortcut"
• Joel Waldfogel, Minnesota: "Quality Predictability and the Welfare Benefits from New Products: Evidence from the Digitization of Recorded Music" and "Streaming Reaches Flood Stage: Does Spotify Stimulate or Depress Music Sales?"
• Reinhilde Veugelers, Leuven: "Mind the Gap: Capturing Value from Basic Research through Mobile Inventors and Partnerships" and "Novel Science for Industry"
• Gaétan de Rassenfosse, EPFL Lausanne: "How (Consistently) Valid Are Our Patents? An Answer from Multiple Examiners"
• Katrina Ligett, Caltech: "Privacy and Data-based Research" and "Buying Private Data without Verification"
• Michael Frakes, Northwestern: "Is the Time Allocated to Review Patent Applications Inducing Examiners to Grant Invalid Patents?: Evidence from Micro-Level Application Data" and "Patent Office Cohorts"

Fall 2014

• Martin Wörter, ETH Zurich: "Competition and Persistance of R&D"
• Rochelle Dreyfuss, NYU: "In Praise of an Incentive-Based Theory of Intellectual Property Protection" and "A US View on the EU Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court"
• David Clark, MIT: "Platform Models for Sustainable Internet Regulation" and "Measurement and Analaysis of Internet Interconnection and Congestion"
• Tal Zarsky, Haifa: "The Privacy/Innovation Conundrum" and "May the Oods Be Forever in Your Favor": Lotteries in Law"
• Scott Stern, MIT: +Control Versus Execution: Endgenous Appropriability and Entrepreneurial Strategy+
• Gideon Parchomovsky, Penn: "Reinventing Copyright and Patent" and "Copyrigth Trust"
• Shane Greenstein, Northwestern: "The High Cost of a Cheap Lesson in Wireless Access" and "Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia"
  

Fall 2013

• Jackson Nickerson, Washington University St. Louis: "Dominant Designs, Innovation Shocks, and the Follower's Dilemma" and "The Problem-Finding and Problem-Solving Perspective for Strategic Management"
  
• Peter Howitt, Brown University: "Theory and Practice of Monetary Policy"
  
• Geertrui van Overwalle, Leuven & Tilburg: "Innovation in Agriculture: Between Exclusive Ownership and Open Commons?"
  
• Daniel Rubinfeld, Berkeley: "IP and the Smartphone Operating System Wars: Google v. Apple v. Microsoft" and "Airline Network Effects"
  
• Jonathan Masur, Chicago: "Innovation and Incarceration: An Economic Analysis of Criminal Intellectual Property Law" and "Two-Part Pricing and the Costs of Patents"
  
• Heidi Williams, MIT: "Intellectual Property Rights and Cumulative Innovation" and "Do Fixed Patent Terms Distort Innovation? Evidence from Cancer Clinical Trials"
  
• David Abrams, Penn: "Patent Value and Citations: Creative Destruction or Defensive Disruption?"
  
• Michele Boldrin, Washington University St. Louis: "The Case Against Patents" and "Reconstructing the Great Recession"

Fall 2012

• John Hagedoorn, Maastricht: "R&D Alliances and Intellectual Property Rights" and "The Use of Formal and Informal Intellectual Property by Open Innovation Firms"
  
• Julie Mortimer, Boston College: "Demand Estimation for Retail Markets" and "Experimental Evidence on Retail Demand Estimation and the Role of Vertical Agreements"
  
• Patrick Rey, Toulouse: "Retail Power and Vertical Foreclosure" and "Non-obviousness and Screening"
  
• Michelle Sovinsky, University of Zurich: "Is Intel's Marketing Campaign Predatory?"
  
• Gerald Spindler, Göttingen: "Innovation in Software: The Uneasy Case of IP Protection of Software"
  
• Daniel German, University of Victoria: "The Challenges of License Compliance when Using Open Source Software" and "Identifying the License of Open Source"
  
• Dietmar Harhoff, LMU Munich: "Conflict Resolution, Public Goods and Patent Thickets" and "To Be Financed or Not ...: The Role of Patents for Venture Capital-Financing"
  
• Pamela Samuelson, Berkeley: "Is Copyright Reform Possible?" and "Why Gardens and DNA Are Uncopyrightable"

Fall 2011

• Peter Ryan, University of Luxembourg: "Verifiable Voting Schemes in the Wild" and "Prêt à Voter with Confirmation Codes"
  
• Christopher Yoo, Pennsylvania: "Modularity Theory, Layering, and Internet Policy" and "Wireless Networks: Technological Challenges and Policy Implications"
  
• Catherine Tucker, MIT: "How Does the Use of Trademarks by Third-Party Sellers Affect Online Search?" and "Patent Trolls and Technology Adoption"
  
• Susan Landau, Harvard: "Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies" and "Untangling Attribution: Understanding the Requirements Needed for Attribution on the Network"
  
• Pierre Larouche, Tilburg: "A Paradigm Shift in EU Network Industries Regulation? From a Formalistic to an Integrative Approach" and Cloud Computing in the EU Policy Sphere"
  
• Andrei Hagiu, Harvard: "Intellectual Property Intermediaries" and "Multi-Sided Platforms"
  
• Alessandro Acquisti, Carnegie Mellon: "Privacy and Behavioral Economics: From the Paradox of Control to Discounting the Past" and "Privacy in the Age of Augmented Reality"
  

Fall 2010

• Philippe Aghion, Harvard: "Rethinking Growth Policy Two Years into the Crisis" and "Of Mice and Academics: Examining the Effect of Openness on Innovation"
  
• Daniel Crane, Michigan: "Policing Market Power in Intellectual Property Through the Use of Liability Rules" and "Rethinking Merger Efficiencies?"
  
• Rochelle Dreyfuss, NYU: "Does IP Need IP? Accomodating Intellectual Production Outside the Intellectual Property Paradigm" and "Commodifying Life: The Pros, Cons, Politics, and Ethics of Gene Patenting"
  
• Ulrich Kaiser, University of Zurich: "Labor Mobility and Patenting Activity"
  
• Peter Menell, Berkeley: "Notice Externalities and Intellectual Property" and "Caught in a Vise of Greed: Creators and the Challenge of Copyright Policy in the Digital Age"
  
• Tommaso Valletti, Imperial College London: "Pharmaceutical Innovation and Parallel Trade" and "Seesaw in the Air: Interconnection Regulation and the Impact on Mobile Prices"

Fall 2009

• Barton Beebe, NYU: "Intellectual Property Law and the Sumptuary Code" and "The Continuing Debacle of U.S. Antidilution Law: Evidence from the First Three Years of Trademark Dilution Revision Act Case Law"
  
• Bronwyn Hall, Berkeley: "The Use and Value of Patents" and "The Private Value of Software Patents"
  
• Scott Hemphill, Columbia: "Intellectual Property Protection for Fashion in the United States and Europe" and "Examining the Determinants of Generic Drug Challenge"
  
• Joachim Henkel, Munich: "Modularity for Value Appropriation: Drawing the Boundaries of Intellectual Property" and "Alternative Motives to File for Patents: Profiting From Pendency and Publication"
  
• Klaus Schmidt, LMU Munich: "Licensing Complementary Patents: Patent Trolls, Market Structure and Excessive Royalties" and "Behavioral Contract Theory"
  
• Armin Schmutzler, University of Zurich: "The Relation Between Competition and Investment: Why Is It Such a Mess?"
  
• Katherine Strandburg, NYU: "User Innovation and Use Exemptions from Patent Infringement" and "Constructing Commons in the Cultural Environment"

Fall 2008

• James E. Bessen, Boston University: "Patent Failure"
  Harry First, NYU: "Netscape is Dead: Remedy Lessons from the Microsoft Litigation" and "Microsoft and the Evolution of the Intellectual Property Concept"
• Dominique Foray, EPFL Lausanne: "Structural Changes in Industrial R&D in Europa and the US - Towards a New Model?"
• Hans Gersbach, ETH Zurich: "Basic Research and Growth Policy"
  
• Georg von Graevenitz, LMU Munich: "Incidence and Growth of Patent Thickets: The Impact of Technological Opportunities and Complexity"
  
• François Lévêque, Mines ParisTech: "Technology Standards, Patents and Antitrust" and "Early Commitments Help Patent Pool Formation"
  
• Frederick Schauer & Barbara Spellman, Virginia: "Artists' Moral Rights and the Psychology of Ownership"
  
• Barbara Spellman, Virginia: "Evaluating Information from Uncertain, Deceptive, and Unreliable Sources"
• Christopher Sprigman, Virginia: "The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms in Stand-Up Comedy" and "Copyright and the Rule of Reason"