Conference on Impact Funds as a Partial Replacement for Patent Monopolies

Event time: 
Thursday, November 11, 2021 - 9:45am to 1:45pm
Location: 
Online () See map
Event description: 

To solve the world’s problems (such as climate and COVID) and ensure humanity’s continued progress, we need innovations to be developed and then diffused. Our dominant regime for incentivizing and rewarding Step One involves patents which generate substantial monopoly markups. These markups greatly impede Step Two, the diffusion of innovations. This problem is especially severe in regard to poor populations, whose specific problems are neglected by innovators (e.g., tropical diseases) and in regard to innovations whose benefits are widely dispersed beyond the buyer (e.g., green innovations). The conference will discuss alternative incentives that would allow innovators to be rewarded according to the impact of their innovation provided they forgo the usual monopoly rewards.

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