Seizure as a solution to the tragedy of the anticommmons in intellectual property

The anticommons and its tragedy

An anticommons occurs when multiple owners each have a right to exclude others from a scarce resource and no one has an effective privilege of use. The “tragedy of the anticommons”, coined by Michel Heller, is when the right to exclude is exercised by some of the right holders, with the result that the resource becomes under-utilized. Heller has discussed this occurrence in post soviet regimes (cite harvard) and in biomedical research (cite science) with Rebecca S. Eisenberg. In the particular case of intellectual property the under-utilization is the suppression of innovation based on patented resources due to the cost of using upstream resources. This problem becomes magnified because the rights holders have monopolies on the resource - the innovator cannot find an alternate supply of the resources they need.

Heller and Eisenberg establish three main hurdles that must be overcome to prevent tragedy in the Biomedical anticommons, which can be extended to intellectual property in general. These are the high transaction costs of bundling rights, conflicting goals of rights holders and a rights holder overvaluing of their particular piece of the resource.

While some view this situation as one with a free market solution http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=948468, others think that this could be a pitfall in the current system and thus an area ripe for government intervention, (ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS).

Government siezure as a solution to the tragedy

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