Saturday, March 29, 2008 9:35 AM
Blawg Book Highlighter #26: Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk
The Patent and Copyright Clause of the US Constitution was proposed in 1787 by James Madison and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. In Federalist #43, Madison wrote, “The utility of the clause will scarcely be questioned. The copyright of authors has been solemnly adjudged, in Great Britain, to be a right of common law. The right to useful inventions seems with equal reason to belong to the inventors. The public good fully coincides in both cases with the claims of the individuals.”
Now, more than 200 years later, the utility of the clause, at least as it pertains to patents, is being questioned.
In their new book, Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk (Princeton), James Bessen and Michael Meurer, make the compelling case that the vast majority of patents are worthless. The costs, in most cases, far outweigh the benefits.
The Founders miscalculated because they failed to foresee an explosion of litigation that has seen the number of patent lawsuits triple since 1980. Bessen and Meurer show that the annual cost of patents now exceeds a whopping $16 billion.
Analyzing data from 1976 to 1999, the two researchers have found that only in a select few sectors – like the pharmaceutical and chemical industries – do patents actually pay off. The result, the authors contend, is that contrary to the very purpose of patent law, in the vast majority of cases, patents act to discourage rather than encourage innovation.
A synopsis and sample chapters are at Researchoninnovation.org/dopatententswork/
For those interested in the lighter side of patents, check out What the Funny…Patents.
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Randy Richardson is an author, humorist, former journalist, and a lawyer. His fiction debut, Lost in the Ivy, a murder mystery set against the backdrop of Chicago's storied Wrigley Field, won the Writers Marketing Association's “Fresh Voices” Book Award and the Illinois Woman's Press Association's Mate E. Palmer Communications Contest. He writes the Dad Libs column for SanityCentral.com and is a frequent contributor to Chicago Parent magazine. In his day job, he is an attorney for the Social Security Administration’s disability appeals branch. At night and during lunch breaks, he serves as president of the Chicago Writers Association (chicagowrites.org) and works on his second novel while a 4-year-old tugs on his legs. Visit his website at www.lostintheivy.com.
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