Learning to Live with Patents: Acquiescence & Adaptation to the Law by the Life Sciences Community

Scholarly studies of how the law affects knowledge work tend to fall between two extreme views. Economists, as well as legal and policy scholars, debate how changes in legal institutions, particularly in expanding property rights, shape the daily lives of knowledge workers. In contrast, ethnographies of knowledge work usually fail to highlight lawyers as key actors. The current study reconciles these views, arguing that in response to changing legal institutions, knowledge communities engage in both costly acquiescence and adaptation to the law. This perspective suggests that while the law may cause significant disruption to knowledge communities, through their adaptation the law becomes commonplace and unremarkable. Our study measures these processes by tracing how changes in the enforcement of intellectual property rights shape patterns of knowledge exchange and accumulation within knowledge communities. Specifically, we conduct a large-scale quantitative analysis of publications and patents drawn from a period characterized by dynamic changes in property rights enforcement, assessing how enforcing intellectual property rights over scientific knowledge influences the life sciences community. Our analysis reveals that initially, IP engenders costly acquiescence on the part of academic scientists, reducing their level of knowledge exchange. Over time, however, adaptation exerts an even larger influence, facilitating exchange even in the presence of IP rights. Consequently, the long-term impact of patent law reflects a balancing act between the processes of acquiescence and adaptation. More broadly, our work suggests that legal institutions play an important, though subtle, role in the structure and practices of knowledge communities and knowledge work.