Commons, The Anti-commons Theory And Its Application In The Institutional Arrangement Of Intellectual Property Rights

Hardin's classic "The Tragedy of the Cannons" tells us that multipleowners are each endowed with the privilege to use a given resource, andno one has the right to exclude another. When too many owners hold suchprivileges of use, the resource is prone to overuse. In recently, Heller, aprofessor of Law , University of Michigan , argued in his "Tragedy of theAnticonmons", multiple owners are each endowed with the tight to excludeothers from a scarce resource, and no one has an effective privilege ofuse. When too many owners hold such rights of exclusion, the resource isprone to underuse. Traditional Intellectual Property Protection is simplyaimed at avoiding the tragedy of the conmons, while this paper, combiningwith "The Tragedy of the Anticonmons" , analyses that what measures shouldbe taken when "tragedy of the anticommons" is likely to accur.It comes to the conclusion that Intellectual property protection should give attentions to both strong and weak protection with a priority of weak protection to avoid "tragedy of the anticomnons" , otherwise give priority of strong protection to avoid "tragedy of the coaifions" .