{"id":88930,"date":"2013-04-16T04:33:39","date_gmt":"2013-04-16T10:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/?p=88930"},"modified":"2013-04-16T04:33:39","modified_gmt":"2013-04-16T10:33:39","slug":"the-case-against-patents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/?p=88930","title":{"rendered":"The Case Against Patents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/research.stlouisfed.org\/wp\/2012\/2012-035.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Read it.<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>The case against patents can be summarized briefly: there is no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity, unless the latter is identified with the number of patents awarded \u2013 which, as evidence shows, has no correlation with measured productivity.<\/strong> This is at the root of the \u201cpatent puzzle\u201d: in spite of the enormous increase in the number of patents and in the strength of their legal protection we have neither seen a dramatic acceleration in the rate of technological progress nor a major increase in the levels of R&amp;D expenditure \u2013 in addition to the discussion in this paper, see Lerner [2009] and literature therein.<\/p>\n<p>As we shall see, there is strong evidence, instead, that patents have many negative consequences. Both of these observations, the evidence in support of which has grown steadily over time, are consistent with theories of innovation that emphasize competition and first-mover advantage as the main drivers of innovation and directly contradict \u201cSchumpeterian\u201d theories postulating that government granted monopolies are crucial in order to provide incentives for innovation.<\/p>\n<p>The differing predictive and explanatory powers of the two alternative classes of models persist when attention is shifted to the historical evidence on the life-cycle of industries. T<strong>he initial eruption of small and large innovations leading to the creation of a new industry \u2013 from chemicals to cars, from radio and TV to personal computers and investment banking \u2013 is seldom, if ever, born out of patent protection and is, instead, the fruits of highly competitive-cooperative environments. <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Read it. The case against patents can be summarized briefly: there is no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity, unless the latter is identified with the number of patents awarded \u2013 which, as evidence shows, has no correlation with measured productivity. This is at the root of the \u201cpatent puzzle\u201d: in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-think-about-it"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88930"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88932,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88930\/revisions\/88932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}