Book Review: The Knockoff Economy

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Is copyright always best? What about trademarks and patents?

Those are the macro questions that law professors Kai Raustiala and Christopher Springman tackle in their new book, The Knockoff Economy, available today from Oxford University Press.

In school, students are taught of the historic importance of copyright and intellectual property as ways of assuring the rights of the creator and ensuring first-mover advantage. In The Knockoff Economy, the authors take a look at innovations that cannot be copyrighted, including football plays, jokes,recipes, and music.

In the digital era, how does non-protection (or lack of punishment for imitation) impact and, in some cases, spur innovation and profits? How does giving one’s music away on Myspace or Facebook lead to future financial gain? Are there times when the social norms and pressures of peers (e.g., comics confronting knockoff artists backstage) supercede the need for legal monitoring?

Rather than dismissing the power of copyright, the authors — both bloggers for the Freakonomics blog — tell compelling, well-researched stories that coax us all into thinking differently about the potential opportunities that arise from knockoffs, mimicry, and prolific sharing.

While this book has obvious appeal for professionals interested in issues of intellectual property (such as attorneys, inventors, CEOs, and librarians), the seductive arguments will have general audience appeal. Their approach to examining the as-is state of intellectual property will inform conversations about similar ideas such as open access, open educational resources, open source, and Creative Commons licensing.

Highly recommended.

For a quick summary of the book by Inc., click here.

Reviewed from the advanced reader copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

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