Tragedy of the anticommons
The tragedy of anti - commons (English tragedy of the anti commons ) describes the dilemma in which the variety of rights holders makes the achievement of a socially desirable result impossible. The English expression of this neologism was coined by the U.S. American law professor Michael Heller.
Term
The term is based on the concept of tragedy of the commons and describes the dilemma that results from a large number of rights holders. The concept provides a unified framework for a number of failures in the coordination as Godfather Thor Tung, submarine patents, nail houses and other, mostly bureaucratic problems. Overcome such system failure can be difficult and may degenerate into violence. But there are different approaches such as expropriation, deadlines for legal act, patent pools, such as cross-licensing or other types of license organization.
Classic
In Heller's articles from the Harvard Law Review in 1998, he wrote that there was a lot of street stalls after the fall of communism in many cities of Eastern Europe, but also many empty store locations. In a study out he came to the conclusion that the problem lay in the variety of departments and the private sector, which had different rights on the use of commercial premises. It was very difficult for a dealer, if not impossible, to successfully negotiate the use of the property. Although all owners lost with the empty shops money and the stores were in great demand, made it their conflicting interests impossible to use the property effectively.
Patents
Patents are often cited as an example of the tragedy of the anti - commons, because a patent owner has exclusive rights over the use of the patented technology. Now, if the production of a certain product, the use of many techniques and includes components which were patented by different people or companies, it can be very difficult at the same time negotiate appropriate contracts with all rights owners. This may mean that someone would have to pay royalties so many that it would be too expensive or too risky to produce the desired product. As a result, would a product that would combine many innovations and would be in high demand, will not be made simply because the cost of the necessary patents would be too high.
Lose the potential manufacturers, lose the patent owner, consumers who have benefited from the technology lose, and under certain circumstances may also lose the environment when the product would have replaced a polluting technology. If medical technology is involved, even people can lose their lives. As the responsible patent owners are also consumers, they lose twice. Paradoxically, this occurs when, or just because they actually " rational" behave in order to leverage their resources for their self-interest.
For many products, a manufacturer has to negotiate the use of several patents. For example, a DVD player contains a number of parts which have been patented by different companies. A single microchip can affect more than 5,000 different patents. As a result, no one can produce a DVD player or microchip without each individual patent owners in licensing his patents agrees. In many industries agree patent owner either a cross- license their patents (ie, you can use our if we can use your ) or work out a joint licensing agreement, which makes the products affordable. That is generally for DVD players, computer components and other consumer electronics that the cost of licensing the patents are rarely much higher than the production costs. The patents for a DVD player for example, about 20 U.S. dollars for the cheapest models.
Thanks to the simplified patenting of biological discoveries, it is likely that anyone who has worked in biomedical research, multiple patented procedures must apply in order to develop a marketable product. However, since these patents are short-lived and end only slightly patents in marketable products, it is for the exploration of new treatments and processes often unreasonably expensive and results in the rejection of the product on the market. In fact, a patent owner can already sue the research itself as patent infringement and impose a license fee, even if the chance of a marketable product is small.
Anyway, you can already make the launch of a product legally impossible for a questionable patent. In a dispute between Research In Motion and NTP, Inc. focused on a single wireless e -mail patent, which is a key component of BlackBerrys. It resulted in an appeal, which would have prevented the sale of BlackBerrys in the U.S., if it had been not only in the appeal.
Copyright
Also, the competition for copyrights may prevent the marketing of a product at a reasonable price, which copyright holders can avoid royalties of great value. WKRP in Cincinnati for example, was among the most popular sitcoms of all time, and many of the TV shows that time were successfully released on DVD. WKRP however, was for many years not available on DVD. The television producers of the program had agreements with music licensing agencies such as ASCAP and BMI, where a fee is paid for each song, which occurred in the TV show. The producers were able to calculate so, how much money was necessary in each case for the use of music. For DVDs, there was no such agreement with ASCAP and BMI, because they had no rights to DVDs. The producers of the series so had to the original owner of the copyright recourse and were faced with the task, with several dozen composers to negotiate individually. The current owner of the consignment, 20th Century Fox, the show released on DVD in 2007, where he has replaced music for which he could get no rights by similar pieces.
Expropriation
In order to build roads, railways and other infrastructure, the expropriation has long been regarded as a necessary tool. Without expropriation each landowner must agree a route along the sale of his country and thus the construction. Again, the problem of anti - commons is clear, since each individual landowner can stop the construction of a road. The possibility that a single person can veto a project is a major business risk and can greatly increase the cost of construction.