A reward system will save administrative costs relative to patent or copyright systems
Shavell & Van Ypersele, 01 --- *Harvard Law School and National Bureau of Economic Research, AND ** University of Namur and Catholic University of Louvain (October 2001, Steven Shavell and Tanguy Van Ypersele, “Rewards versus Intellectual Property Rights,” Nexis-Uni, ZK)
Administrative Costs. Under a reward system, administrative costs would be incurred by the government in deciding upon rewards, and these costs [*544] presumably would exceed those associated with deciding on the granting of patents. There would also be litigation costs borne in relation to disputes about rewards between innovators and the government, as well as between different innovators. However, under a reward system, there would be a savings in administrative costs relative to under the patent or copyright systems: under these systems, intellectual property rights have to be protected by the state, parties often make efforts to determine if their rights have been violated and also to ascertain if they are violating someone's else's rights, and litigation costs are expended in disputes over rights; but under the reward system, there are no intellectual property rights to generate such costs. On a priori grounds, one cannot say whether these administrative cost savings of the reward system would outweigh the added administrative costs that the reward system would entail. 44