Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It
Josh Lerner, Adam B. Jaffe
Language: English
Pages: 221
ISBN: 2:00215288
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The United States patent system has become sand rather than lubricant in the wheels of American progress. Such is the premise behind this provocative and timely book by two of the nation's leading experts on patents and economic innovation.
Innovation and Its Discontents tells the story of how recent changes in patenting--an institutional process that was created to nurture innovation--have wreaked havoc on innovators, businesses, and economic productivity. Jaffe and Lerner, who have spent the past two decades studying the patent system, show how legal changes initiated in the 1980s converted the system from a stimulator of innovation to a creator of litigation and uncertainty that threatens the innovation process itself.
In one telling vignette, Jaffe and Lerner cite a patent litigation campaign brought by a a semi-conductor chip designer that claims control of an entire category of computer memory chips. The firm's claims are based on a modest 15-year old invention, whose scope and influenced were broadened by secretly manipulating an industry-wide cooperative standard-setting body.
Such cases are largely the result of two changes in the patent climate, Jaffe and Lerner contend. First, new laws have made it easier for businesses and inventors to secure patents on products of all kinds, and second, the laws have tilted the table to favor patent holders, no matter how tenuous their claims.
After analyzing the economic incentives created by the current policies, Jaffe and Lerner suggest a three-pronged solution for restoring the patent system: create incentives to motivate parties who have information about the novelty of a patent; provide multiple levels of patent review; and replace juries with judges and special masters to preside over certain aspects of infringement cases.
Well-argued and engagingly written, Innovation and Its Discontents offers a fresh approach for enhancing both the nation's creativity and its economic growth.
The Iraq War and International Law
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Business Law: Text and Cases (West's Business Law)
general patterns of, 90–94 impact of Federal circuit on U.S. system, 107–10 lessons from, 94–95 overall impact of 1982 changes on U.S. system, 4–6, 104–7, 125–26 overview of U.S., 7–9, 96–98 patent policy changes by decade, 91fig patent systems with formal examination system, 93fig simplification of patent process in England, 82–86 three key lessons from, 79 “Winged Gudgeon” patent debate (1836), 128–29, 159 patent system justifications: building a better mousetrap as, 39–41 to control
Introduction. In subsequent chapters, we tell the story of how we got to the point where serious lawyers are being paid serious fees by a big company to try to shut down the PB&J operation of a grocery store. In this chapter, we lay the foundation for that story. We begin in the next section by explaining how the patent system operates. The rest of the chapter is devoted to understanding why technological innovation is so crucial to society and how patents foster it. A Patent Primer A
likely to solve the broader problem of invalid business method patents being granted. By and large, the presumption today is that everyone gets the same patent treatment.231 Without this presumption, there would be tremendous pressure by particular industries to get features in “their” patents that they found desirable. Of course, the arguments for these preferences would always be couched in public interest terms, but when an industry lobbyist starts talking about the public interest, we all
Reforming the Patent System,” http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=611&kaid=140&subid=293 (last visited December 24, 2003). 126. The source of these data is http://www.ipo.org (last visited December 24, 2003), as compiled from PTO and U.S. Office of Management and Budget documents. The 2003 and 2004 data are taken from PTO’s annual budget requests, and are the amount of diversion that they anticipate. 127. Figure 5.2 is based on the annual reports of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office,
York Times, (October 31, 1994), D2. 170. See, for example, Ariel S. Pakes, “Patents as Options: Some Estimates of the Value of Holding European Patent Stocks,” Econometrica, 54 (1986), 755–784; and Dietmar Harhoff, et al., “Citation Frequency and the Value of Patented Inventions,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 81 (1999), 511–515. 171. Patents 5,380,237, and 6,467,180, respectively. 172. American Intellectual Property Law Association, Report of Economic Survey 2001, Washington: AIPLA,
