Within intellectual property, Darcy v. Allen and the Statute of Monopolies are frequently, almost reflexively, invoked as establishing a baseline norm of economic freedom from which governments depart when they grant exclusive rights to deal in any trade or article of commerce. Against this free-market backdrop, all such grants are suspect, and only those that are justified by reference to their originality or utility are valid. Rejecting the dominant view of Darcy and the Statute of Monopolies, the paper provides a more detailed political and legislative history of both the compromise leading to Darcy and the adoption of the Statute of Monopolies than any to date, and consequently demonstrates that their true importance lies in their political, not economic, content. This reinterpretation suggests that both events are best viewed through the lens of political accountability, not economic doctrine. The paper concludes by considering the ramifications that this new understanding has for modern debates about intellectual property.
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Critics of initiatives to diversify corporate boards frequently rely on efficiency arguments. Diversity opponents marshal four principal claims. First...
The number of law firm partners who identify as women has more than doubled since 1993. Will these gender parity advances regress as employers curb...
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Anyone who studies trade secret law in depth knows that the field is complex and nuanced. That complexity can be intimidating to novices. Accordingly...
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After several years of dramatic growth, ESG investing seems to have entered a period of retrenchment. While it is impossible to predict the future...
Lenders are perfectly free to decide for themselves whether, when, how, to whom and on what terms they will extend credit to a sovereign borrower. But...
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