Author(s): Robert P. Merges
Year: 2004
Abstract: This essay draws on recent scholarship concerning the nature and function of medieval guilds. I argue that certain features of these guilds appear in modem institutions that further collective invention: patent pools, industry-wide standard-setting organizations, informal knowledge exchange among academic scientists, and (in a more limited way) open source software development. In particular, guilds and modem institutions share three features: an “appropriability structure” that makes it profitable for individual entities to both develop new technologies and share them; reliance on group norms, as opposed to formal legal enactments, as an enforcement mechanism; and a balance of competition and cooperation under which group-generic information is shared, but individual-proprietary information is not. Collective invention institutions demonstrate that formal property rights are not the only way to foster innovation and that mediating institutions may mitigate property-rights bottlenecks, lessening what has been termed the “tragedy of the anticommons.”
Keywords: medieval guilds, modern institutions, appropriability structure