Yesterday I picked up a copy of Innovation and its Discontents, Princeton Univ Press (2004) with a new preface by authors Adam Jaffe and Joshua Lerner. Perhaps more than any other academic work, this book has stirred broad interest and debate in patent policy, yet not always in ways the scholars would recommend. In the new preface Jaffe and Lerner warn against mis-direction that has marked patent discourse following important cases such as eBay and Research in Motion:

We applaud the greater attention that policy makers and the general public have been giving to patent policy in the last year or so. Yet in many cases observers are still drawing the wrong conclusions about what needs to be fixed to get the system on the right track. Many have concluded that certain kinds of technology, such as Internet business methods or biotech drugs, should not be patentable. Or they have demonized certain firms for ruthlessly enforcing patents “instead of” concentrating on making and selling products.

But the problem with the patent system is nether that it does not fit certain technologies nor that certain kinds of firms should not be allowed to enforce patents. The problem is that the system that we use for determining who should get a patent in the first place is not sufficient. While no patent system will ever be perfect, the technology world today is awash in patents that should not have been granted in the first place, because they either are not new ideas, are overly broad, or did not sufficiently flesh out the invention at issue to deserve patent protection.

posted by Noel Le @ 6:02 AM | Academia, Patents

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