Intellectual Property and Eminent Domain: If Ever the Twain Shall Meet
Regardless of ideological persuasion, most economists will agree that technological innovation is a social process capable of generating widespread private and social benefits. How societies might organize to promote innovation is a more factious topic. One method often used to promote innovation is the granting of property rights over ideas and innovations. Once granted and enforced, intellectual property rights allow innovators to reap economic benefits from their innovations, benefits that might otherwise be freely appropriated by others through imitation. The design of intellectual property rights regimes is a difficult process marked by a problem Keith E. Maskus (2000) referred to as "dancing the dual distortion." For society to benefit from innovations, they must be widely available for use at low cost. At the same time, to create incentives for innovation, innovators are granted the right to limit the availability and consequently increase the costs of adopting their innovations. As with other monopolistic situations, the intellectual property owner's pursuit of private benefits may demand that the innovation be employed at less than socially desirable levels. Like most property rights, intellectual property rights can be bought, sold, or, generally, held for private use or gain. One must say "generally" because, in some cases, when a society's desire to acquire someone's private property surpasses the