We “stand on the shoulder of giants,” goes the famous adage. In a groundbreaking new law review article, Does Patented Information Promote the Progress of Technology?, Cardozo Law’s Jonathan H. Ashtor examines the relationship among patents, information theory, and their corresponding benefits to society and technology. Read more
Category: Economic Study
Creative Upstarts and Startups: How IP Creates Opportunities and Opens Doors
This is the first in a series of posts summarizing CPIP’s 2016 Fall Conference, “Intellectual Property & Global Prosperity.“ The conference was held at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University on October 6-7, 2016. Videos of the conference panels and keynote address, as well as other materials, are available on the conference website. Read more
UNITAID’s Request for Suggestions on Breaking Down IP Barriers Ignores Harmful Patent Delay
Last month, global health initiative UNITAID launched an appeal for suggestions on breaking down barriers that frustrate the progress of public health. UNITAID is a multilateral partnership hosted by the World Health Organization whose mission is to develop systematic approaches to identifying challenges in the treatment of devastating diseases such as HIV, TB, and malaria. Read more
How Strong Patents Make Wealthy Nations
By Devlin Hartline & Kevin Madigan
How did the world’s wealthiest nations grow rich? The answer, according to Professor Stephen Haber of Stanford University, is that “they had well-developed systems of private property.” In Patents and the Wealth of Nations, recently published in the CPIP Conference issue of the George Mason Law Review, Haber explains the connection: Property rights beget trade, trade begets specialization, specialization begets productivity, and productivity begets wealth. Read more
Acknowledging the Limitations of the FTC’s PAE Study
The FTC’s long-awaited case study of patent assertion entities (PAEs) is expected to be released this spring. Using its subpoena power under Section 6(b) to gather information from a handful of firms, the study promises us a glimpse at their inner workings. Read more
How Patents Help Startups Grow, Innovate, and Succeed
Many academic studies of the patent system focus on the negative, extrapolating from anecdotes about a few bad actors to make the case that our patent system is broken and to bolster cries for legislation weakening patent rights. Precious few studies focus on the countless honest and hardworking patent owners whose inventive labors benefit us all. Read more
Repetition of Junk Science & Epithets Does Not Make Them True
Here’s a brief excerpt of a post by Adam Mossoff that was published on IPWatchdog.
In their recent submission to the Washington Post’s series on so-called “patent reform” and “patent trolls,” James Bessen and Michael Meurer repeat the same junk science claims we’ve all heard many times before. Read more
It’s Time to Say “No” to Junk Science in the Patent Policy Debates
Last March, forty economists and law professors submitted a letter to Congress expressing “deep concerns with the many flawed, unreliable, or incomplete studies about the American patent system that have been provided to members of Congress.” These concerns were confirmed again last week when Unified Patents released a report on patent litigation with the same kind of “highly exaggerated claims regarding patent trolls” that the professors were concerned about. Read more
How Rhetorical Epithets Have Led the FTC Astray in its Study of Patent Licensing Firms
We’ve all heard the narrative about patent licensing firms, often referred to pejoratively as “patent trolls.” These patent owners, who choose to license their innovations rather than build them, are the supposed poster-children of a “broken” patent system. It’s as if commercializing one’s property, just like a landlord leases his land for another to use, is suddenly a bad thing. Read more
Cohen et al. “Patent Trolls” Study Uses Incomplete Data, Performs Flawed Empirical Tests, and Makes Unsupportable Findings
PDF summary available here
I. Introduction
A recent draft study about patent licensing companies entitled “Patent Trolls: Evidence from Targeted Firms” is making the rounds on Capitol Hill and receiving press coverage. This attention is unfortunate, because the study is deeply flawed and its conclusions cannot and should not be relied upon. Read more