Participant/jim-bessen
I currently do economics research on innovation and I formerly was a software developer and founder and CEO of a software firm.
I wrote the first WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) PC publishing software in 1983 and founded a company, Bestinfo, in 1984 to market desktop publishing solutions to commercial publishers. Over the next few years, Bestinfo developed the first system to support PC publishing networks and the first single-source system for commercial-quality page makeup and color imaging. Over 1,000 commercial publishers purchased Bestinfo systems ranging from the Sears Catalogue to Prosveshcheniye (the largest Russian book publisher), from Cahners and Reed (the largest trade magazine publishers in the U.S. and U.K.) to Inc. magazine and TV Guide. In 1986 Bestinfo received funding from Sevin Rosen Venture Capital and in 1993 it was acquired by Intergraph.
I am currently Lecturer in Law at Boston University School of Law, contributor to the Technological Innovation and Intellectual Property newsletter/blog, and Director of Research on Innovation. My published works include (for a complete list, see Curriculum Vitae):
- with Michael J. Meurer (forthcoming) Patent Failure: How a Broken Legal System Puts Innovation at Risk
- with Eric S. Maskin (forthcoming) âSequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation,â RAND Journal of Economics.
- with Robert M. Hunt (2007), âAn Empirical Look at Software Patents,â Journal of Economics and Management Strategy 16, no. 1, pp. 157-89.
- âWhat Good is Free Software?â in Robert Hahn, editor, Government Policy toward Open Source Software, AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, Washington, DC, 2002.