Arguments Before The Committee On Patents Of The House Of Representatives On H R 18851 To Amend The Laws Of The United States Relating To Patents In The Interest Of The Originators Of Horticultural Products

Arguments Before the Committee on Patents of the House of Representatives on H.R. 18851, to Amend the Laws of the United States Relating to Patents in the Interest of the Originators of Horticultural Products

The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity Revisited

While the importance of innovation to economic development is widely understood, the conditions conducive to it remain the focus of much attention. This volume offers new theoretical and empirical contributions to fundamental questions relating to the economics of innovation and technological change while revisiting the findings of a classic book. Central to the development of new technologies are institutional environments, and among the topics discussed here are the roles played by universities and other nonprofit research institutions and the ways in which the allocation of funds between the public and private sectors affects innovation. Other essays examine the practice of open research and how the diffusion of information technology influences the economics of knowledge accumulation. Analytically sophisticated and broad in scope, this book addresses a key topic at a time when economic growth is all the more topical.

First the Seed

This history of the scientific and commercial lines of plant development in the United States traces the transformation of the seed from a public good produced and reproduced by farmers into a commodity controlled by businesses and corporations divorced from the uses of their product.