Intellectual Property

Overview
Featured Commentary
Publications
Research Team
Fellows
Explore

Featured Commentary

Articles

Battles Over Patents Can Be Productive

October 14, 2021 featuring Stephen Haber

via Financial Times

Videos

Making The US Economy Grow Again: The Role Of Intellectual Property Rights

November 30, 2020 By Stephen Haber

via PolicyEd

learn more

Articles

The Battle Over Patents

Familiar complaints about “trolls” ignore the intricate machinery that works to allocate the gains from intellectual property.

November 3, 2021 By Stephen Haber , Naomi R. Lamoreaux

via Defining Ideas

Event

Property Rights, Innovation, And Prosperity

September 17, 2020

Event

Emerging Threats, Innovation, And Security

October 17, 2023

Podcasts

Hoover Book Club: Stephen Haber On "The Battle Over Patents: History And Politics Of Innovation"

December 6, 2021

via Hoover Podcasts

Fellows in this Policy Area

Richard A. Epstein

Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow (adjunct)

Learn more

Richard A. Epstein

Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow (adjunct)

Richard A. Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution, is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University Law School, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. In 2011, Epstein was a recipient of the Bradley Prize for outstanding achievement. In 2005, the College of William & Mary School of Law awarded him the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize. Epstein researches and writes in a broad range of constitutional, economic, historical, and philosophical subjects. He has taught administrative law, antitrust law, communications law, constitutional law, corporation criminal law, employment discrimination law, environmental law, food and drug law, health law, labor law, Roman law, real estate development and finance, and individual and corporate taxation. He edited the Journal of Legal Studies (1981–91) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991–2001). Epstein’s most recent publication is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). Other books include Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the Rule of Law (2011); The Case against the Employee Free Choice Act (Hoover Institution Press, 2009); Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection for Private Property (2008); How the Progressives Rewrote the Constitution (2006); Overdose (2006); and Free Markets under Siege: Cartels, Politics, and Social Welfare (Hoover Institution Press, 2005). He received a BA degree in philosophy summa cum laude from Columbia in 1964; a BA degree in law with first-class honors from Oxford University in 1966; and an LLB degree cum laude, from the Yale Law School in 1968. Upon graduation he joined the faculty at the University of Southern California, where he taught until 1972. In 1972, he visited the University of Chicago and became a regular member of the faculty the following year. He has been a senior fellow at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics since 1984 and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985. He has been a Hoover fellow since 2000.

Stephen Haber

Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow

Learn more

Stephen Haber

Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow

Stephen Haber is the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the A.A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. In addition, he is a professor of political science, professor of history, and professor of economics (by courtesy). Haber has spent his career investigating why the world distribution of income so uneven. His papers have been published in economics, history, political science, and law journals. He is the author of five books and the editor of six more. Haber’s most recent books include Fragile by Design with Charles Calomiris (Princeton University Press), which examines how governments and industry incumbents often craft banking regulatory policies in ways that stifle competition and increase systemic risk. The Battle Over Patents (Oxford University Press), a volume edited with Naomi Lamoreaux, documents the development of US-style patent systems and the political fights that have shaped them. His latest project focuses on a long-standing puzzle in the social sciences: why are prosperous democracies not randomly distributed across the planet, but rather, are geographically clustered? Haber and his coauthors answer this question by using geospatial tools to simulate the ecological conditions that shaped pre-industrial food production and trade. They then employ machine learning methods to elucidate the relationship between ecological conditions and the levels of economic development that emerged across the globe over the past three centuries. Haber holds a Ph.D. in history from UCLA and has been on the Stanford faculty since 1987. From 1995 to 1998, he served as associate dean for the social sciences and director of Graduate Studies of Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. He is among Stanford’s most distinguished teachers, having been awarded every teaching prize Stanford has to offer.