CIPIL Intellectual Property Seminar Series 2011-12: Valuing Attribution and Publication in Intellectual Property

CIPIL Intellectual Property Seminar Series 2011-12: Valuing Attribution and Publication in Intellectual Property with Christopher J. Buccafusco (Assistant Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law)

Room G24, Faculty of Law 

Abstract:  This work tests empirically whether the prospect of publication, either with or without attribution, affects the tendency of creators of intellectual property to significantly overvalue their creations. In earlier work, we reported the results of a series of experiments that illuminate the ways in which creators assign value to the things that they create. That research has suggested that creators are subject to a systematic bias that leads them to overvalue their work. This bias, which we have called the "creativity effect", potentially results in inefficient markets in intellectual property (IP), because creators may be unwilling to license their works for rational amounts. That research, however, focused exclusively on the monetary value that creators derive from their work. There is reason to believe that they also value opportunities for publication and for improving their reputations as artists and inventors. If this is the case, they should be willing to trade off monetary compensation for those opportunities, thereby increasing the number of IP transactions that are likely to occur versus a world in which money is the only currency. While there is considerable scholarship suggesting that creators do indeed value publication and attribution, there is almost no research that seeks to test that value empirically and to compare it to the other values that creators may have.

Bio:Professor Buccafusco joined the Chicago-Kent faculty in 2009 and was voted Professor of the Year by the Student Bar Association for 2009-10. He teaches torts and copyright law. His research interests include intellectual property law, behavioral law and economics, law and psychology, and legal history. His recent work focuses on experimental research on intellectual property, psychological challenges to legal notions of rationality, and the application of happiness research to the law. His published articles have appeared in the Columbia Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review (twice), California Law Review, Cornell Law Review (twice), and Georgetown Law Journal.

Professor Buccafusco is a Ph.D. candidate in legal history at the University of Chicago. He graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 2004 and earned a B.S. degree from Georgia Tech in 2001. Before coming to Chicago-Kent, Professor Buccafusco taught for a year as a visiting faculty member at the University of Illinois College of Law.

Please contact Gaenor Moore for more information