Is the Pursuit of Patents Passe?

April 21 2009

Despite the bragging rights of the top 5 or 10 companies to be awarded U.S. patents in any given year, patent value seems to be eroding (except, perhaps, for patent trolls -- a topic for another post).

Our March, 2009 Articles collection contains two interesting perspectives on U.S. patents:

1) the ability to buy and sell portions of inventor discoveries is a greater motivator of inventor creativity than the protection that patent rights provide; and

2) too many patents on too many methods that are prior art, obvious or simply gaming the system to overwhelm the examiners by incorporating hundreds of claims or resubmitting the same application multiple times.

Check out
1) "Markets Are Better Than Patents in Promoting Intellectual Discovery, Says Caltech-led Team of Economists"

and

2) "Has the US patent system gone too far?"

Category: Open to Debate
Filed under: Government/LegislationPatents/IP