Patents and Innovation: Evidence from Economic History [pdf]

http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.27.1.23

by asdf333 • 13 years ago

37 27 13 years ago

pubs.aeaweb.org

Someone2• 13 years ago

Same journal, also from Vol. 27, No. 1, same subject: http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.27.1.3

TOC at http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.27.1

kvb2• 13 years ago

I'm less anti-patent than most people here, but I think that's a very good article. In particular, the treatment of pharmaceuticals is not the absurd "if we just got rid of patents, innovation would continue at the same rate" argument that some patent opponents advance, but a more nuanced take on what other changes could be made to the larger system to maintain appropriate incentives.

yxhuvud• 13 years ago

When it comes to pharmaceuticals, one has to remember that the vast majority of the costs involved are with the late stage trials that society mandates. That medicine is properly tested is not a bad thing, but there may be other ways to finance such tests without having to resort to monopolies.

M8R-fhlcjm10• 13 years ago

Patents provide the incentive to invest in R&D by providing a form of guarantee on their investments.

Generally speaking, the countries with the strongest patent rights produce many of the innovative companies.

conanite• 13 years ago

> Generally speaking, the countries with the strongest patent rights produce many of the innovative companies.

The article suggests that the available evidence does not support this conclusion. It seems that in historical technology fairs, countries with a weak or no patent system in place performed as well as other countries, both in terms of numbers of inventions they presented, and awards they received.

The article also describes some instances where patents clearly inhibited innovation - for example in the US in 1916, aircraft production halted due to patent disputes between Wright and Curtiss.

M8R-fhlcjm10• 13 years ago

That's assuming the article is right, but a look around the world shows the opposite - generally speaking the stronger the patent rights, the stronger the innovation. Weak IP African countries vs strong IP in American, European, Japan, Korea.

mtgx• 13 years ago

Where's the evidence to that? In fact the evidence shows the contrary. Also, US does not have the strongest patent laws.

M8R-fhlcjm10• 13 years ago

1) Where is the evidence of the opposite? The data is overwhelmingly. 2) U.S. is certainly in the top tier of strongest patent laws.

M8R-fhlcjm10• 13 years ago

from the article:

    "In countries without patent laws, inventors depend entirely on secrecy, lead time, and other alternatives to patents in protecting their intellectual property."

This has been shown time and again, remove patents and you remove the incentive to disclose.

glesica4• 13 years ago

Who cares? With so many patents issued in the US there is basically no disclosure anyway, at least as far as a small company or individual is concerned. In addition, many modern inventions are so complex that it is almost impossible to identify every patent they might violate. Even large companies get hit by this sort of thing, just look at video codecs.

M8R-fhlcjm10• 13 years ago

That's a cop-out given the abundance of search tools, regexp, CTRL-F, etc...

zby• 13 years ago

Just another link in this subject: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2016968 - the problem with patents is the scalability of the system. It can work reasonably when there is an index - like in the chemical patents now - but without efficient search it is a minefield for inventors.

Patents and Innovation: Evidence from Economic History [pdf]

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