Courtesy of Greg Aharonian, a link to the press release announcing the issuance of a Council of Foreign Relations report on patents.

There's something of a puzzle here. The report concludes:

"Increased litigation, overly broad patents and a 'laissez-faire anti-trust policy' regarding patents have all contributed to a downward spiral in competition, he contends. 'Although intellectual property rights play an important role in innovation, the recent increase in patent protection has not supported innovation so much
as it has impeded the development and use of new technologies.', the report states."

Greg has much to say about this and similar conclusions. One sampe:

"How much crack cocaine do you have to smoke to write something so nonsensical? One of the reasons the Patent Office is flooded with
patent applications is that AMERICAN companies, big and small, in every industry are in furious competitive races to beat out the competition, including inventing and patenting great and small. In one of the very few serious studies of software patents, Berkeley law and economics professors found no such decrease in competition in the heavily patented software industry.:

Me, I'm confused. This comes from giving people the benefit of the doubt, and being slow to assume they are smoking crack. I've been mucking around with various patent studies for a while now, and one of the most frustrating things about the process has been, for all the anecdotes, how hard it is to confirm that the effect of patents in the big picture is do do more harm then good. Yes, litigation is expensive--but also rare. Particularly as compared to Europe, the US is doing very well on the innovation front. So what *is* going on with the C or FR report?