Policymakers must decide the optimal tradeoff across industries. Second, if patent rights are not closely related to the underlying inventions, more patenting may reduce R&D in industries that are both R&D and patent intensive. Third, for reasons largely unrelated to intellectual property, the U.S. private innovation system has become far more decentralized than it was a generation ago. It is reasonable to inquire whether a patent system that worked well in an era of more centralized innovation functions as well for the more decentralized environment of today.
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Working Paper
Economics and the Design of Patent Systems
March 2007
WP 07-06 – The author uses intuition derived from several of his research papers to make three points. First, in the absence of a common law balancing test, application of uniform patentability criteria favors some industries over others.
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