Patents as property I
The idea that patents can be analyzed as a property system—both regarding its strengths and its weaknesses—seems to be gaining currency in influential circles.
Last week in the Wall Street Journal, L. Gordon Crovitz writes “…in the case of patents, poorly defined property rights for inventions are leading even the biggest companies to take desperate measures…” He goes on to highlight our argument that the patent system provides much stronger incentives for pharmaceuticals than for software and communications technologies because of the nature of the rights granted:
New drugs require great specificity to earn a patent, whereas patents are often granted to broad, thus vague, innovations in software, communications and other technologies. Ironically, the aggregate value of these technology patents is then wiped out through litigation costs.
