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Sunday, September 30, 2012

Case for Abolishing Patents

In the Atlantic:  No doubt they are a mess.  Though many have invested so much in them that it will be a very tough task.  I have seen both truly phenomenal and completely ridiculous things patented.  Do patents make an economy more productive?

" ... What do we get from all this? Precious little, the paper argues. They find virtually no statistical evidence that rising patent applications actually make our economy more productive.  Eliminating patents altogether, Boldrin and Levine say, would also have fewer negative consequences than most of us assume. Most industries, they argue, only resort to patent litigation once their pace of innovation has slowed. As long as they still cranked out out new, popular products, companies like Apple would continue to profit by being the first to market, which often confers a long-term advantage.  ... " 

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