Author(s): Paul M. Schwartz Year: 2008 Abstract: Reputational sanctions are often offered as a substitute for law. Robert Ellickson has shown how social norms and gossip allow Shasta County ranchers to order theirs affairs and resolve disputes without resort to, or regard for, legal sanctions.[1] In business regulation, particularly in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley world, disclosure is […]
Anonymous Disclosure of Security Breaches, in Securing Privacy in the Internet Age
The New Privacy
Author(s): Paul M. Schwartz Year: 2003 Abstract: In 1964, as the welfare state emerged in full force in the United States, Charles Reich published The New Property, one of the most influential articles ever to appear in a law review. Reich argued that in order to protect individual autonomy in an “age of governmental largess,” […]
Free Speech vs. Information Privacy: Eugene Volokh’s First Amendment Jurisprudence
Author(s): Paul M. Schwartz Year: 2001 Abstract: Free Speech versus Informational Privacy, 52 Stanford Law Review 1559 (2000), discusses and critiques Eugene Volokh’s recent article, Freedom of Speech and Information Privacy, 52 Stanford Law Review 1049 (2000). In his article, Volokh contends that the government’s safeguarding of information privacy endangers a wide range of speech […]
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, Information Privacy, and the Limits of Default Rules
Author(s): Paul M. Schwartz Year: 2002 Abstract: The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB Act) of 1999 sought to provide new rules for financial privacy. Only a few years after the GLB Act’s enactment, however, it appears to have failed as far as privacy protection is concerned. The Act has pleased neither privacy advocates nor the financial industry. […]
Voting Technology and Democracy
Author(s): Paul M. Schwartz Year: 2002 Abstract: Voting Technology and Democracy, 77 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 625 (2002), examines a phenomenon that I term the “voting-technology divide.” The “divide” was caused by the deployment of election technology in November 2000 with better and worse levels of feedback to voters. Through an analysis of data from the […]
Beyond the War on Terrorism: Towards the New Intelligence Network
Author(s): Paul M. Schwartz Year: 2007 Abstract: In Terrorism, Freedom, and Security, Philip B. Heymann undertakes a wide-ranging study of how the United States can – and in his view should – respond to the threat of international terrorism. Heymann makes clear his own policy and legal preferences. First, he firmly rejects the widely used […]
On the Optimality of the Patent Renewal System
Author(s): Suzanne Scotchmer Year: 1999 Abstract: The patent system is mainly a renewal system: the patent life is chosen by the patentee in return for fees. I ask whether such a system can be justified by asymmetric information on costs and benefits of research. In such a model I show that renewal mechanisms (possibly with […]
Patent Breadth, Patent Life, and the Pace of Technological Progress
Author(s): Suzanne Scotchmer Year: 1999 Abstract: In active investment climates where firms sequentially improve each other’s products, a patent can terminate either because it expires or because a noninfringing innovation displaces its product in the market. We define the length of time until one of these happens as the effective patent life, and show how […]
The Uninvited Guest: Patents on Wall Street
Author(s): Robert P. Merges Year: 2003 Abstract: The 1998 State Street Bank case opened the door to patents for “business methods.” One important category of business method patents covers financial products: securities, derivatives, futures contracts, and the like. This paper describes how State Street Bank emerged, unbidden by the financial services industries, as a byproduct […]
An Estoppel Doctrine for Patented Standards
Author(s): Robert P. Merges Year: 2008 Abstract: Technical standards, such as interface protocols or file formats, are extremely important in the network industries that add so much value to the world economy today. Under some circumstances, the assertion of patent rights against established industry standards can seriously disrupt these network industries. We have in mind […]