Lynne Kiesling

[NOTE: this post is a continuation of the immediately preceding one.]

The second Economist article (subscription required) goes into more detail regarding the problems and proposed reforms. First, the article usefully references Innovation and Its Discontents, a new book on patenting by Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner (two of the most knowledgeable IP economists out there). Jaffe and Lerner dig in thusly, according to Amazon:

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.

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.

Patent scope has extended, patent length is often extended through renewals or through patenting of sub-parts of whole things (such as separate patenting of reformulations of subsets of pharmaceuticals), and patent offices are swamped and sometimes ill-equipped to evaluate the claims on which the patent is being requested.

This is all a problem because the US is the most dynamic and innovating economy, but also because other parts of the world are following our lead, to everyone’s likely detriment:

The mission creep of America’s patent system into more contentious areas is also spreading elsewhere. Later this month, the European Council of Ministers will discuss draft legislation on harmonising policy on computer-implemented innovations. Many small software companies in Europe, as well as “open-source” software developers that make non-proprietary software, oppose the initiative. They fear that it is a first step towards adopting controversial software patents, already awarded in America, which could block different implementations of the same features. Were further proof needed that this may not be an entirely positive development, look no further than the mighty software monopolist, Microsoft, whose chairman, Bill Gates, has called on employees to increase the number of patents that the company files.

The rising importance of patents has led both to an arms race and a game of bluff. Many firms in the information-technology and life-sciences industries say they have an incentive to obtain as many patents as possible as bargaining chips in litigation. The patents are used to reach a cross-licensing agreement, usually with some cash thrown in, so that both firms can continue to do business. Those firms that lack patents are thus disadvantaged.

Some reform ideas include a pre-patent public comment period in which others can file comments with the PTO. This is a good idea, because although it opens the door to critics who are competitors with the patentor, it also decentralizes the testing and monitoring function. On net, I think that’s a good move, because it’s easy to discount the grumblings of competitors. One problem that arises, though, is when the only ones qualified to provide evaluation of the patent are the competitors. Hmmmm …

I have had a love-hate relationship with patents throughout my professional life. Are they a government granted monopoly, which I oppose? Yes. But are they a useful means of inducing beneficial innovation that might not otherwise occur (i.e., solving an externality problem)? Maybe. And that relationship has changed over time. Perhaps now patents are not on balance the socially useful property right that they were in the 17th century.

Lynne Kiesling

This week’s Economist has a couple of good articles about the need for patent law reform. The first one (subscription required), entitled “Monopolies of the Mind”, starts off with a great quote from Thomas Jefferson:

PATENTS, said Thomas Jefferson, should draw “a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not.”

I found this wording peculiarly interesting. Embarrassment? The close of the article explains:

Patents are, after all, government-enforced monopolies and so, as Jefferson had it, there should be some “embarrassment” (and hesitation) in granting them.

Hear hear! In any case, the article then goes on to discuss “business method” patents in the US and elsewhere, and their effects on innovation:

In 1998 America introduced so-called “business-method” patents, granting for the first time patent monopolies simply for new ways of doing business, many of which were not so new. This was a mistake. It not only ushered in a wave of new applications, but it is probably inhibiting, rather than encouraging, commercial innovation, which had never received, or needed, legal protection in the past. Europe has not, so far, made the same blunder, but the European Parliament is considering the easing of rules for innovations incorporated in software. This might have a similarly deleterious effect as business-method patents, because many of these have been simply the application of computers to long-established practices. In Japan, firms are winning large numbers of patents with extremely narrow claims, mostly to obfuscate what is new and so to ward off rivals. As more innovation happens in China and India, these problems are likely to spread there as well.

But even though Europe has not fallen into the business process patent trap, it does impose transaction costs that can reduce innovation:

Europe’s patent system is also in a mess in another regard: the quilt of national patent offices and languages means that the cost of obtaining a patent for the entire European Union is too high, a burden in particular on smaller firms and individual inventors. The European Patent Office may award a patent, but the patent holder must then file certified translations at national patent offices to receive protection. Negotiations to simplify this have gone on for over a decade without success.

Their recommendation? Start by making patent applications (that’s applications, not awards) public, which should certainly reduce the number of applications for some more sensitive and easy to replicate or reverse engineer ideas.

Lynne Kiesling

All I can say is uff-dah! Google has released Google Scholar, a search engine that searches more specific scholarly sources. For example, I ran this search on “reactive power”, and it turned up a bunch of useful engineering citations that would be more difficult for me to find through my university library. And if I didn’t have a university library available to me, I might not be able to find them online.

It also reports citations to various sources, and you can click through to the documents citing the sources, much along the lines of the Social Science Citation Index.

Yee hah! This is a happy day, particularly if you work in an interdisciplinary research field like I do.

Thanks to Rand Simberg for the link.