The justification for creating temporary monopolies through patents and copyrights is that they encourage creative activity that would not otherwise take place. But Raustiala and Sprigman argue that imitation-which music labels and movie studios often consider theft-frequently stimulates creativity rather than discouraging it. In this engaging text, the authors draw on the experience of many industries-fashion, cuisine, finance, and open-source software, among others-to demonstrate that a lack of effective copyright protection hardly throttles innovation and in fact encourages it.
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