The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation
"Raustiala and Sprigman have some good news: copying and creativity can co-exist.  Using extensive industry case studies of fashion, fonts, jokes, recipes, and other sectors, they remind us that a coherent intellectual property policy inherently involves trading off protection and imitation.  Let us hope that policymakers get the message and restore balance to our intellectual property system."-Hal Varian, Chief Economist, Google"Policymakers still-astonishingly-have a mistake at the core of their understanding of how innovation happens. This beautifully written and brilliant book by two of America's most creative thinkers corrects that mistake, and launches an incredibly important project to understand just how much law creativity requires."-Lawrence Lessig, author ofRemix and The Future of Ideas"Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman have written a fascinating look at the surprising relationship between creating and copying. It's amazing to see the parallels across industries as diverse as cuisine, comedy and football."-David Chang, Chef/Owner of Momofuku"The Knockoff Economyis the most entertaining portent of doom I've read in a long time."-Patton Oswalt, stand-up comedian and actor"This book shines a powerful searchlight onto some neglected aspects of the intellectual property field, in the process revealing some fascinating insights that require us to rethink past assumptions about the incentives to create."-David Nimmer, author ofNimmer on Copyright