Innovation Contracts

A proposal for re-envisioning intellectual property law.

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One of the biggest flaws with intellectual property law today is that it restricts the free market's capacity for creative destruction. This is a problem because creative destruction is the ultimate check against oligopolies which stifle innovation and limit economic growth (via assertion of exclusive intellectual property rights).

Innovation Contracts is a new paradigm which shifts the current intellectual property regime from a property law model of exclusive rights toward contract law which allows for more nuanced and negotiable mutual benefits. One of the primary reasons for re-envisioning creativity and innovation as a contract, between artist/innovator and the public, is that the concept of efficient breach in contract law - that it's acceptable to breach a contract if doing so generates enough economic value to compensate the non-breaching party with a surplus left over - analogizes well with the concept of creative destruction. Hence, Innovation Contracts essentially build a mechanism for creative destruction into our free market system. 

We plan to demonstrate the concept through a sample contract wich covers the subject matter of modern day copyright.

Document Discussion

Hi David - Be sure to tag this document and any others with "HackTheAct" so we can all see how this is progressing!

Feel free to comment on the idea and add details if you feel so compelled.

It sounds interesting - are you going to modify an existing contract to illustrate your ideas?

I originally thought about hacking an existing contract, but then I realized "Hmm, where can I find a contract between a private party and the public?" And I couldn't come up with a good answer. So I think we'll have to build this contract from scratch, unless someone suggests a better starting point.

Sure, but this would presumably only cover IP "owned" by the service issuing the TOS. Actually, now that I think about it, as creators increasingly publish their works online, either on self-managed sites or through user-generated content sites, this might be the way to go. Although now this concept is starting to blur into what Creative Commons already does. Originally, this idea started out with more focus on patents and then I tried to expand it to all IP. But the separate systems for patent/trademark and copyright law militate a fork in how to take this concept through to execution. Since patent reform is my top priority, I switched focus to my "Kill the Trolls" hack. I admit my only goal with this was to open the conversation on how to shift overall IP policy from a property law paradigm to a contract one. Going any further than that would require specific proposals for each branch of IP.

All right -- so which branch do we start with? ;)

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