Innovations that Thrive without IP

Continually updated list… (work in progress)

• Kinsella, That Screwy, Ballyhooey Nollywood, C4SIF
• Doug French, Mick Jagger on making money in music
• Kinsella, Funding for Creation and Innovation in an IP-Free World, Mises Blog (Dec. 1 2010)
• Innovation in the gaming business model: Humble Indie Bundle (computer games, music, and software examples)
• Fashion industry (see Copycats vs. Copyrights: Does it make sense to legally protect the fashion industry from knockoffs?, Newsweek; Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion’s free culture)
• Perfume smells
• culinary dishes (recipes, meals) (but see: Mike Masnick, Bartenders Looking For Greater Intellectual Property Protection For Drinks, Techdirt)
• production of rules
• Dance routines and choreography (see Copyrighting Dance Steps–The Death of Choreography)
• databases and maps (Feist case)
• German copyright: No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany’s Industrial Expansion?, By Frank Thadeusz (Jeff Tucker, Germany and Its Industrial Rise: Due to No Copyright); German version: Explosion of knowledge, By Frank Thadeusz, der Spiegel (German) (new study by economic historian Eckhard Hoffner shows that Germany’s lack of copyright in the 19th century led to an unprecedented explosion of publishing, knowledge, etc., unlike in neighboring countries England and France where copyright law enriched publishers but stultified the spread of knowledge and limited publishing to a mass audience. According to Robert Groezinger, “This article in Der Spiegel is all about how the absence of copyright in Germany led to an “explosion of knowledge” in the 19th century. The reason there was no copyright law was that there was no central government until 1871. This contrasts with the UK, where there had been copyright since 1710, and the number of publications was lower by a factor of 10 compared to Germany. Also, the number of copies printed was much, much lower in the UK (hundreds as compared to ten thousand or so). The article claims that this is the main reason that Germany’s production and industry had caught up with everyone else by 1900.”
• Murakami Releases His Own eBook Without His Publisher
• Netherlands and Switzerland patents?  (see studies)
• Brazil: How To Make A Profit By Giving Music Away
• Doug French, Secrets of the Most Successful Touring Band of All Time (Grateful Dead)
• Jamendo (royalty-free music; a community of free, legal and unlimited music published under Creative Commons licenses.
  Share your music, download your favorite artists!)
• Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical Price
• New York Times Bestseller Seth Godin to No Longer Publish Books Traditionally (“I’ve decided not to publish any more books in the traditional way. 12 for 12 and I’m done. I like the people, but I can’t abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don’t usually visit to buy something they don’t usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that’s hard to spread … I really don’t think the process is worth the effort that it now takes to make it work. I can reach 10 or 50 times as many people electronically. No, it’s not ‘better’, but it’s different. So while I’m not sure what format my writing will take, I’m not planning on it being the 1907 version of hardcover publishing any longer.”)
• Cory Doctorow on Giving Away Free E-Books and the Morality of “Copying”
• Five Reasons Why Best-Selling Authors Are Going Direct
• Artists Make More Money in File-Sharing Age Than Before It;
• USA Today Latest Media Co. to Realize Open is Better
• Masnick, Comic Book ‘Pirated’ On 4Chan, Author Joins Discussion… Watches Sales Soar
• Masnick: Musician: Sell Physically Attractive Objects Worthy Of Purchase; Let Free Music Drive Success
• The Digital Art Auction – Revenue model to finance content creation for cyberspace
• Triangulation Interview with Cory Doctorow (various creative ideas for making money from book publishing)
• Unbound: connecting authors to readers to publish books with no middleman.

Tagged as: innovation