Tragedy of the anticommons

The tragedy of the anticommons is a type of coordination breakdown, in which a commons does not emerge, even when general access to resources or infrastructure would be a social good. It is a mirror-image of the older concept of tragedy of the commons, in which numerous rights holders' combined use exceeds the capacity of a resource and depletes or destroys it.^[2] The "tragedy of the anticommons" covers a range of coordination failures, including patent thickets and submarine patents. Overcoming these breakdowns can be difficult, but there are assorted means, including eminent domain, laches, patent pools, or other licensing organizations.^{[citation needed]}

The two 'tragedies' may be compared as follows:

• The 'tragedy of the commons' occurs when a resource has many users, none of whom own it, and thus none of whom have the ability to exclude others from using it, leading to the over-utilization of that resource.
• The 'tragedy of the anticommons' occurs when a resource has many owners, all of whom have the ability to exclude others from using it, leading to the under-utilization of that resource.

The term originally appeared in Michael Heller's 1998 article of the same name^[2] and is the thesis of his 2008 book.^[3] The model was formalized by James M. Buchanan and Yong Yoon.^[4] In a 1998 Science article, Heller and Rebecca S. Eisenberg, while not disputing the role of patents in general in motivating invention and disclosure, argue that biomedical research was one of several key areas where competing patent rights could actually prevent useful and affordable products from reaching the marketplace.^[5]