A Patent Is Worth Having, Right? Well, Maybe Not
New York Times:
PATENTS are supposed to give inventors an incentive to create things that spur economic growth. For some companies, especially in the pharmaceutical business, patents do just that by allowing them to pull in billions in profits from brand-name, blockbuster drugs. But for most public companies, patents don’t pay off, say a couple of researchers who have crunched the numbers.
‘Today, over all, patents don’t work; for the information technology industry especially, they don’t work,’ said James Bessen, who became a lecturer at Boston University’s law school after a career in business. In 1983, he created the first computer publishing software with Wysiwyg (an acronym for ‘what you see is what you get’) printing abilities. He also founded a desktop publishing company, Bestinfo, later acquired by Intergraph.
Neither Mr. Bessen nor his company patented anything, in part because his lawyers told him that software couldn’t be patented at the time. He ultimately became interested in whether patents spurred innovation, since the software industry for years innovated steadily without using many patents. He and a colleague, Michael J. Meurer, are readying a book on the topic, ‘Do Patents Work?,’ due in 2008. (A synopsis and sample chapters are at researchoninnovation.org/dopatentswork/.)…
Photo by: James Yang.
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