Re: A Patent Is Worth Having, Right? Well, Maybe Not

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tom Gray <tom_gray_grc () yahoo com>
Date: July 20, 2007 6:17:42 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] A Patent Is Worth Having, Right? Well, Maybe Not

prof Farber -- for your IP list, if you think it
suitable:

 The famous book "Does IT Matter" demonstrated that
investment in information technology provides no
competitive advantage to firms. It is a just cost of
doing business. Event the vaunted gains in
productivity from IT weree found to be illusory.
However consumers and the economy as a whole gain
great benefit from IT.

The nub of this is that great caution should be used
in evaluating studies that take only a narrow focus.
Afterall it took years of research for economists to
find any advantages accruing to firms from their
computer investments. One could easily have concluded
from those studies that software itself and not just
software patents was a waste of money.


--- David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
> Date: July 17, 2007 11:01:05 PM EDT
> To: undisclosed-recipient:;
> Subject: A Patent Is Worth Having, Right? Well,
> Maybe Not
>
>
> Prototype
> A Patent Is Worth Having, Right? Well, Maybe Not
>
> By MICHAEL FITZGERALD
> The New York Times
> July 15, 2007
>
> 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/.)
>
> The two researchers have analyzed data from 1976 to
> 1999, the most
> recent year with complete data. They found that
> starting in the late
> 1990s, publicly traded companies saw patent
> litigation costs outstrip
> patent profits. Specifically, they estimate that
> about $8.4 billion
> in global profits came directly from patents held by
> publicly traded
> United States companies in 1997, rising to about
> $9.3 billion in
> 1999, with two-thirds of the profits going to
> chemical and
> pharmaceutical companies. Domestic litigation costs
> alone, meanwhile,
> soared to $16 billion in 1999 from $8 billion in
> 1997.
>
> Things have probably become worse since then. For
> instance, patent
> litigation is up: there were 2,318 patent-related
> suits in 1999, and
> 2,830 in fiscal 2006 (though that's down from the
> peak year, 2004,
> when 3,075 were filed). Mr. Bessen said awards in
> patent cases also
> seemed to be up, though he was less confident in
> that data. Worse, he
> says, companies doing the most research and
> development are sued the
> most.
>
> ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/business/yourmoney/15proto.html?
> ex=1342152000&en=17ab981b1b3cf1dd&ei=5090
>
>
>
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