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Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It
 
 
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Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It [Hardcover]

Adam B. Jaffe (Author), Josh Lerner (Author)

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Review

A lucid, entertaining and sobering look at the American patent system.
(Hal R. Varian The New York Times )

A disturbing analysis of how the patent system, the heart of the knowledge economy, is rotten.
(The Economist )

This book sounds an alarm bell that is hard to ignore.
(Giuseppe Ammendola American Foreign Policy Interests )

A timely and concise book that presents a comprehensive and convincing argument about . . . changes in U.S. patent law beginning in 1982.
(Zainub Verjee Leonardo Reviews )

Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner have given us a wonderfully timely book--and also one that is beautifully executed.
(Rochelle Dreyfuss Michigan Law Review )

Review

An extraordinarily lucid and engaging exposition of our patent system: why we need it, where it came from, how it works, what is wrong with it, and how to fix it. Indispensable for anyone interested in the role of intellectual property rights and technological change in our economy. Whoever said economists cannot write well?
(Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University )
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Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries , the United States evolved from a colonial backwater to become the pre-eminent economic and technological power of the world. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Amazon.com: 3.2 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)

24 of 32 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Eloquent, Dec 9 2004
By Peter McCluskey - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It (Hardcover)
This book presents a clear, concise and convincing argument that subtle changes in U.S. laws starting in 1982 have broken a patent system that was working reasonably well until then. It will be more effective at convincing the average person than most other attempts have been, both because of its style and because it shows that the changes which broke the system shouldn't have been expected to help anyone other than patent lawyers. Their analysis will be useful in helping to avoid the takeover of other agencies by special interests.

Their description of how the system should be fixed is less impressive. Their summary of proposed changes strangely fails to include undoing the change in appeals court jurisdiction which they suggest was a primary cause of the problems. Their argument in favor of patenting software, business practices, etc. is more radical than they seem to realize, as it appears to imply that patents should also be extended to mathematical theorems, yet they act as if the burden of proof should be on their critics.

Their confidence that a traditional patent system is better than no patents is unconvincing (but they do a good job of explaining why it is hard to know what the best system is). They support their position by a few examples such as Xerox, whose copier wouldn't have been invented as it was without patent protection. But it's much harder than they imply to determine that a copier wouldn't have been invented some other way a few years later.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars it's OK, Jun 4 2007
By Joe Omalley - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It (Paperback)
Since the authors are economists I was hoping for an economic analysis of our current patent system like Schiff in his "Industrialization without National Patents" does for the international patent system of the 1800s. Instead it is a work of persuasion meant to sell the author's policy suggestions.

This means that the authors spend a lot of time talking about silly granted patents even though the authors later admit such patents are pretty unavoidable. No patent office has the resources to avoid granting some bad patents.

The author's policy suggestions include a revised reexamination system where patent owners would have to post $50,000 bond to defend a reexamination. I am no phyllis schlafly, but such a system would really favor big companies.

The authors are right that the creation of the CAFC in 1982 has resulted in a strengthening of patents. A lot of this is just a result of a new post-1982 uniformity in the case law.

Some signs of the waning of patents are showing. The CAFC, and now the supreme court, are ruling more for defendants in patent lawsuits. Additionally, in the patent office, the allowance rate of patents has declined from a peak of 71% in 2000 to 54% in 2006.

4.0 out of 5 stars Informative and Humorous, Jan 8 2012
By PH - Published on Amazon.com
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I read this for an Intellectual Property class. Not only was the book clear in its examples and concise in its explanations, but it was practical in its suggested solutions and humorous in its storytelling (anyone who can work drag queens into patent law is truly brilliant not to mention funny!)

After reading it from cover to cover (and who can say that about a book that is read for class?), I felt like I had a solid understanding of the material and was entertained while learning--a boon to memory recall on the test later.
› Go to Amazon.com to see all 4 reviews  3.2 out of 5 stars 

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