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Innovation and Its Discontents
Adam B. Jaffe
How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It
Princeton University Press
October 2004
256 pages ISBN: 069111725X Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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.
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