Mark Lemley and Kimberly Moore take a comprehensive look at a US patent practice that is not well-known: continuations. Under this practice, a patent application can be kept alive even after the patent examiner has issued a “final rejection.” Lemley and Moore look at policy changes to limit some common abuses.
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One abuse of the patent system is the practice of “submarine patenting”—keeping a patent application secret for a long time and then springing it on an industry that has already invested heavily in the technology. Stuart Graham and David Mowery examine the role of submarine patents in software patenting.
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Should patent laws for pharmaceuticals be relaxed in poor countries? Doing so involves a trade-off: it may save lives now, but it may reduce incentives for drug companies to develop new products. F. M. Scherer calculates the net effect of this trade-off and concludes that it may well be better to let poor countries free-ride. Read the full story »
Wesley Cohen, Richard Nelson and John Walsh report on the comprehensive Carnegie Mellon survey on innovation at manufacturing firms. They find important differences across industries as to why firms patent based on the nature of the technology.
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One difficult empirical puzzle is the relationship between patents and innovation. Petra Moser looks at this issue with a unique dataset of innovations exhibited at World’s Fairs during the 19th century. She finds that countries with patent systems do not have a higher rate of innovation per capita, but patents affect the industries in which different countries make their innovations.
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