Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding/Comment/Reply From: Texas Law Review | Date: March 1, 2005| Author: Lemley, Mark A; Duffy, John F | Copyright University of Texas, Austin, School of Law Publications, Inc. Mar 2005. Provided by ProQuest LLC.Copyright information

Mark A. Lemley*

Intellectual property protection in the United States has always been about generating incentives to create. Thomas Jefferson was of the view that "[inventions . . . cannot, in nature, be a subject of property;" for him, the question was whether the benefit of encouraging innovation was "worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent."1 On this long-standing view, free competition is the norm. Intellectual property rights are an exception to that norm, and...