Meanings
- The reverse of a commons; a situation in which a resource is subject to fragmented rights, whereby potential users can exclude one another.
A substantial amount of current empirical evidence supports the conclusion that an anticommons has not developed.
2007, Peter K. Yu, Intellectual property and information wealth, page 2891 more example
However, the recent proliferation of intellectual property rights in biomedical research suggests a different tragedy, an "anticommons" in which people underuse scarce resources because too many owners can block each other.
1998 May 1, Michael A. Heller, Rebecca S. Eisenberg, “Can Patents Deter Innovation? The Anticommons in Biomedical Research”, in Science, volume 280, number 5364, →DOI, pages 698–701
Origin
Coined by Michael Heller, based on "tragedy of the commons", a term coined by Garrett Hardin.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
anticommons. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/anticommons
“anticommons.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/anticommons. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “anticommons,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/anticommons.
Source: anticommons on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.