Exciting Stuff

Three Good Things for the day:

1. Adam just submitted his latest article for publication.  It's called, "A Stitch in Time: The Rise and Fall of the Sewing Machine Patent Thicket,"  and it's a great story about the numerous inventions that went into the development of the sewing machine in the 1840's and 50's.  The conflicting claims to the intellectual property resulted in a huge legal battle later called the "Sewing Machine War," but the result was a new market solution: a privately formed patent pool that allowed each member to benefit from his contribution to the whole product.  The purpose of the paper is to dispute the idea that patent thickets are a modern phenomenon which require the reduction of property protection lest we hinder innovation.  It's a pretty easy read, for a scholarly legal article.   I'll post an update when it is available at Adam's SSRN page, in a week or two. 


2. We're making plans for this weekend's visitors, K&P from Chicago.  I love that we're getting so many visitors now that we live in a big city again.  Maybe for our next vacation we can go somewhere without visiting anybody.  We haven't done that in a long time.


3. I caught a tantrum on videotape!  It's a bath-time naked tantrum, though, so unless I can edit it, it might not make it up here.  I'm hopeful, though.