Patent Policy And Innovation

Patents as an Incentive for Innovation Edited by Rafal Sikorski & Zaneta Zemla-Pacud Patents are a reward for human inventiveness. A well-functioning patent system must provide incentives for innovation, safeguard dynamic competition and protect the public interest – a balancing act fraught with difficulty in the ‘connected’ global world. This ground-breaking book is the first to deeply analyse how patent law today performs its function of stimulating innovation in the crucial sectors of healthcare, agriculture, artificial intelligence and communications technology. Patent specialists, practitioners and scholars from various jurisdictions thoroughly describe how patent rights can be deployed to incentivize investments in researching and developing socially critical innovations without sacrificing the public’s interest in sharing the benefits that are produced. Among the emerging issues of patent rights investigated are the following: protectability and morality of according private rights over material derived from the human body; licensing on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms; the supplementary protection certificate (SPC) manufacturing waiver; patent eligibility of artificial intelligence-related inventions; excessive enforcement of patents by patent assertion entities; enforcement of second medical use innovations; the so-called farmer’s privilege, the farm-save seed exemption, and breeders’ rights; international trade regulations and their influence on patent systems; human enhancement technologies and the consequences of patenting them; specifics of patent protection for biologic medicines; challenges posed by artificial intelligence for the disclosure requirement in patent law; and standard essential patent licensing, particularly in the context of the 5G standard. Perspectives taken into consideration by the authors include protectability criteria, length and scope of the granted protection, mechanisms for dealing with the friction between generalized application and specialized concerns, and rights enforcement. These aspects are analysed on the domestic, international and global levels. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgent need to strike the right balance between innovation and access in healthcare and other technologies, a need rooted in patent law. Because the problems discussed – and solutions offered – in this collection of expert essays are of tremendous practical and cultural significance, the book will be of immeasurable value to practitioners, policymakers and researchers in patent law and other fields of intellectual property law.

At head of title: 85th Cong., 2d sess. Committee print. Bibliography: p. 81-86.

The United States patent system has become sand rather than lubricant in the wheels of American progress. Such is the premise behind this provocative and timely book by two of the nation's leading experts on patents and economic innovation. Innovation and Its Discontents tells the story of how recent changes in patenting--an institutional process that was created to nurture innovation--have wreaked havoc on innovators, businesses, and economic productivity. Jaffe and Lerner, who have spent the past two decades studying the patent system, show how legal changes initiated in the 1980s converted the system from a stimulator of innovation to a creator of litigation and uncertainty that threatens the innovation process itself. In one telling vignette, Jaffe and Lerner cite a patent litigation campaign brought by a a semi-conductor chip designer that claims control of an entire category of computer memory chips. The firm's claims are based on a modest 15-year old invention, whose scope and influenced were broadened by secretly manipulating an industry-wide cooperative standard-setting body. Such cases are largely the result of two changes in the patent climate, Jaffe and Lerner contend. First, new laws have made it easier for businesses and inventors to secure patents on products of all kinds, and second, the laws have tilted the table to favor patent holders, no matter how tenuous their claims. After analyzing the economic incentives created by the current policies, Jaffe and Lerner suggest a three-pronged solution for restoring the patent system: create incentives to motivate parties who have information about the novelty of a patent; provide multiple levels of patent review; and replace juries with judges and special masters to preside over certain aspects of infringement cases. Well-argued and engagingly written, Innovation and Its Discontents offers a fresh approach for enhancing both the nation's creativity and its economic growth.

Few systematic economic evaluations have been carried out on patent system to better inform policy choices. This report, which covers a range of areas, and highlights some issues that policy makers should address in the near future, including ...

For anyone with an interest in patent law, intellectual property law generally, and/or the interplay of policy and practice at the forefront of an essentially economic but ideology laden area of law, this is an excellent work providing much food for thought. . . This work is an excellent addition to the literature in the area and will fuel ongoing debate over reform. At the very least it will provide an interesting read for those with an interest in intellectual property law, or who practice in the area. The practice of law can all too easily exhibit the worst attributes of scholasticism; work such as this is an enjoyable remedy, and I recommend this book for all those who care to reflect upon the deeper themes of this area of law and who have an interest in the process of debate as opposed to advocacy for a particular position. . . A decent glass of something along with this book makes for an enjoyable few hours at the very least. Gus Hazel, New Zealand Law Journal The current patent system is both facilitator and stumbling block, as the editors recognise, and the problems raised by borderline inventions at the margins of patentability, as well as the detection and deterrence of free riders, reflect this ambiguity. The editors are to be congratulated on putting together such a good and enjoyable read, complete with a set of conclusions and recommendations. ipkat.com Clearly written in an accessible style, this book brings together economic thinking on innovation and legal thinking on unpatentable invention and sets them in the context of the legal systems in countries in various parts of the world. Its great merit is the emphasis on empirical and institutional analysis of theory and practice. It should inform IP policy-making everywhere. Ruth Towse, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands This book asks whether or not protecting unpatentable innovation is a good idea, especially for developing countries. Edited by well-known specialists from the Queen Mary IP Institute and the Singapore IP Academy, who have included their own substantial contributions, the work contains a number of valuable empirical studies by national experts mainly from the Far East and Latin America on the operation of national utility models and other similar schemes designed to protect innovation outside the patent system. The book is essential reading for lawyers, economists, policy makers and NGOs concerned with how best to encourage national and regional innovation and economic prosperity. David Vaver, University of Oxford, UK Focusing on innovation and development, this book, easy to read and full of interesting detail, provides both valuable insight into the theoretical framework of innovation as supported by intellectual property protection and contains valuable case studies of national systems of innovation in the Pacific Rim States. Thomas Dreier, University of Karlsruhe, Germany This book is concerned with the extent to which innovations should or should not be protected as intellectual property, and the implications this has upon the ability of local manufacturers to learn to innovate. A question the book considers is how far legal protection should extend to inventions that may only just, or indeed not quite, meet the conventional criteria for patentability, in terms of the level of inventiveness. Innovation without Patents offers a thoughtful and empirically rich analysis of the current system in a number of developed and developing countries in the Asia-Pacific. It asks whether such innovations should remain free from patenting, or whether alternative intellectual property regimes should be offered in such cases, and indeed whether the requirements change depending on a country s level of development. This discussion is capped by a number of proposed policy options. The theoretical and practical approaches to intellectual property rights, innovation and development policy formulation make Innovation without Patents acce

Why does society allow, or even encourage, private appropriation of inventions? When do patents encourage competition, when do they hamper it? These questions and many more are addressed by two eminent scholars in this groundbreaking analysis of the economic foundations of the European patent system.

ÔJust how inventive are inventions? More to the point, just how inventive are the inventions covered by patents? Not very, according to Hazel Moir, and there is no reason to doubt her conclusions. She has spent years in painstakingly analysis of dozens of business method patents in Australia and elsewhere. She finds. . . [t]hey are no more than strategic devices intended to annoy and disrupt commercial competition and confuse the market. . . Hazel Moir is a patent expert beholden to no patent theory and no patent interests. In consequence, her research is fresh and inspired. Her conclusion Ð that patents describe and protect obvious combinations of old ideas and trivial variations Ð may not be confined to business methods. It is a conclusion that demands the consideration of policymakers.Õ Ð Stuart Macdonald, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland ÔThis book presents a compelling attack on the patent system. Thoughtfully analyzing the existing empirical literature and providing her own painstaking study of business method patents, Hazel Moir explains how it is that. . . patents have spread geographically and technologically, with increasingly broad rights becoming ever-easier to obtain. Bravely and persuasively, she recommends policymakers tackle one of the most vexing issues in patent law: the quantum of new knowledge that ought to be required to make an invention worthy of protection.Õ Ð Rochelle Dreyfuss, New York University School of Law, US ÔHazel MoirÕs book deserves to become a classic. Between its covers one will find writing of great clarity and data that reveal the real world costs of the patent system. After reading MoirÕs analysis, one wonders what the actual social benefits of the patent system might be. This is evidence-based analysis at its best.Õ Ð Peter Drahos, Australian National University and Queen Mary, University of London, UK ÔThis book presents a compelling attack on the patent system. Thoughtfully analyzing the existing empirical literature and providing her own painstaking study of business method patents, Hazel Moir explains how it is that, despite the intuitions of economists, social scientists, lawyers, judges, and even some inventors, patents have spread geographically and technologically, with increasingly broad rights becoming ever-easier to obtain. Bravely and persuasively, she recommends policymakers tackle one of the most vexing issues in patent law: the quantum of new knowledge that ought to be required to make an invention worthy of protection.Õ Ð Rochelle Dreyfuss, New York University School of Law, US This empirical study uses a scientifically selected sample of patents to assess patent quality. The careful evaluation of the assumptions in alternative economic theories about the generation and diffusion of new knowledge demonstrates that the height of the inventive step is critical to effective and efficient patent policy. The book provides a practical introduction to the policy rules affecting the grant of patents, particularly the rules making the inventive step so low. It also offers insights into interactions between examiners and applicants during the patent application process. Finally, the book compares how the rules about inventiveness operate in the USPTO, the EPO and the Australian Patent Office, gives new insights into business method patenting and offers suggestions for raising the height of the inventive step. Patent Policy and Innovation will appeal to academics researching in the patent field, economists, innovation and industry policy advisors, patent policy makers, NGO policy advisors and patent practitioners.

Innovation benefits consumers through the development of new and improved goods, services, and processes. Competition and patents stand out among the federal policies that influence innovation. Both competition and patent policy can foster innovation, but each requires a proper balance with the other to do so. This report by the Federal Trade Commission discusses and makes recommendations for the patent system to maintain a proper balance with competition law and policy.