Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item OVERCOMING NON-COOPERATION: DESIGNING A PATENT SYSTEM FOR THE PUBLIC(2019) Leaderman, Arthur Isaac; Soltan, Karol E; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Patents allocate power by assigning exclusive property rights to persons who claim to have discovered new scientific or technical art. Accordingly, infringers can be treated like trespassers. In a longstanding theoretical quarrel, some insist that these exclusive rights serve society as incentives to innovation and as just rewards for inventors. Others counter that learning is socially generated and that intangible ideas should not be privately rationed. Theory aside, the institutional facts are polycentric and modulated. While a dominant regime of codes and treaties indeed protects exclusionary property in ideas, several enduring exceptions (subregimes) counter patent exclusivity. Regulations in the technology domains of environment, energy, pesticides, plant genetic resources, and some pharmaceuticals, for example, sometimes set aside strict exclusionary norms and force a patent holder to include others in a semi-commons of cooperative sharing. This dissertation observes that the polycentricity and variability in the patent system expose resistance to exclusionary property rights in ideas. The resistance is stable and can inspire an institutional redesign that brings inclusive norms into dominance, without forfeit of reasonable social and material rewards for inventors. It further challenges the two prevailing modes of justification for the dominant exclusionary norms. Utilitarian or welfare-maximizing justifications for the exclusionary norms are shown to be both multifarious and conflicting. At the same time, non-consequentialist justifications, under the banner of natural rights for the inventor, stumble because patents can be assigned arbitrarily, waste the resources of non-patent holders, and constrain society’s collective liberties to expand knowledge. This study also supports a “proof of concept” for an alternative, inclusive patent system that 1) operates without prohibitory injunctions; 2) extends licenses-of-right that compensate inventions without deadweight losses; 3) opens application and examination procedures for better patent quality; and 4) expands private ordering of disputes to lower transaction costs. This inclusive alternative is hardly utopian: the aforementioned subregimes significantly validate the practicality of cooperative, non-exclusive norms.Item THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS: PUBLIC HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND INCOME INEQUALITY(2015) McDonald, Michael Kelly; Haufler, Virginia A; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)What happens to the welfare of people, especially in developing countries, when their government strengthens intellectual property rights (IPR)? Existing research provides conflicting answers. This project is one of the few to provide large-N analysis of the impact of IPR on social outcomes: specifically health, education, and inequality. Results suggest that stronger IPR are associated with better outcomes on some key indicators of health, education, and inequality, and worse outcomes on other indicators. A detailed case study suggests that the process of IPR reform, the motivations behind IPR reform, and the institutions involved in the adoption and enforcement of IPR partially determine the impact of IPR on each set of outcomes.