Countless high profile cases like the recent patent litigation threatening to shut down the BlackBerry service have long drawn sharp criticism. In response, most of the intellectual property (IP) literature argues for the use of weaker, or liability rule, enforcement as a tool for solving the problems of anticompetitive effects and downstream access while still providing sufficient rewards to IP creators. This Article takes an unconventional approach under which rewards do not matter much, but coordination does matter a great deal. This Article emphasizes both a good and a bad type of coordination.

This Article explains how stronger, or property rule, enforcement can facilitate the good type of coordination that increases competition and access, such as coordination among entrepreneurs, inventors, and venture capitalists to facilitate commercialization of new ideas. Under this view, coordination is offered as an alternative to other goals that have been suggested, including