James Bessen
James Bessen (born 1950) is an economist who has been a Lecturer at Boston University School of Law since 2004,[1] and was previously a software developer and CEO of a software company. Bessen was also a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.[2]
Bessen researches the economics of innovation, including patents and economic history. He has written about software patents with Eric Maskin, arguing that they might inhibit innovation rather than stimulate progress.[3] With Michael J. Meurer, he wrote Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk[4] as well as papers on patent trolls.[5] His book Learning by Doing: The Real Connection Between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth[6] argues that major new technologies require new skills and knowledge that are slow and difficult to develop, affecting jobs and wages.
Bessen developed the first WYSIWYG desktop publishing program at a community newspaper in Philadelphia in 1983.[7] He established and ran a company, Bestinfo, to sell that program commercially. In 1993, Bestinfo was sold to Intergraph.[8]
References
- ↑ http://www.bu.edu/law/faculty/profiles/bios/part-time/bessen.shtml
- ↑ "Bestinfo: WYSIWYG on an IBM PC," Seybold Report on Publishing Systems, 14(4) pp. 15-23.
- ↑ Sequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation, by James Bessen and Eric Maskin, Discussion paper, MIT (2000), published in The RAND Journal of Economics, Volume 40, Issue 4, pages 611–635, Winter 2009
- ↑ Princeton University Press (2008)
- ↑ "The Direct Costs from NPE Disputes," Cornell Law Review, v. 99 (2014) "The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls," Regulation, 34(4), Winter 2011-12
- ↑ Yale University Press (2015)
- ↑ "What You See Is Pretty Close to What You Get: New h&j, pagination program for IBM PC," Seybold Report on Publishing Systems, 13(10), February 13, 1984, pp. 21-2.
- ↑ http://scripting.com/seybold/stories/970206.html
External links
- "Official website". Research on Innovation.