The Battle Over Patents

The Battle Over Patents PDF Author: Stephen H. Haber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019757615X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 393

Book Description
This essay is the introduction to a book of the same title, forthcoming in summer of 2021 from Oxford University Press. The purpose is to document the ways in which patent systems are products of battles over the economic surplus from innovation. The features of these systems take shape as interests at different points in the production chain seek advantage in any way they can, and consequently, they are riven with imperfections. The interesting historical question is why US-style patent systems with all their imperfections have come to dominate other methods of encouraging inventive activity. The essays in the book suggest that the creation of a tradable but temporary property right facilitates the transfer of technological knowledge and thus fosters a highly productive decentralized ecology of inventors and firms.

The Battle Over Patents

The Battle Over Patents PDF Author: Stephen H. Haber
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780197576175
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Book Description
The Battle over Patents traces the long and contentious history of patents, examining how they have worked in practice. The essays in this volume, written by leading social scientists, historians, and legal academics, explore the shortcomings of imperfect patent systems and explain why, despite all the debate, historically US-style patent systems still dominate all other methods of encouraging inventive activity.

The Battle Over Patents

The Battle Over Patents PDF Author: Stephen H. Haber
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780197576199
Category : Intellectual property
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
"Do patents facilitate or frustrate innovation? Lawyers, economists, and politicians who have staked out strong positions in this debate often attempt to validate their claims by invoking the historical record-but they typically get the history wrong. The purpose of this book is to get the history right by showing that patent systems are the product of contending interests at different points in production chains battling over economic surplus. The larger the potential surplus, the more extreme are the efforts of contending parties, now and in the past, to search out, generate, and exploit any and all sources of friction. Patent systems, as human creations, are therefore necessarily ridden with imperfections; nirvana is not on the menu. The most interesting intellectual issue is not how patent systems are imperfect, but why historically US-style patent systems have come to dominate all other methods of encouraging inventive activity. The answer offered by the essays in this volume is that they create a temporary property right that can be traded in a market, thereby facilitating a productive division of labor and making it possible for firms to transfer technological knowledge to one another by overcoming the free-rider problem. Precisely because the value of a patent does not inhere in the award itself but rather in the market value of the resulting property right, patent systems foster a decentralized ecology of inventors and firms that ceaselessly extends the frontiers of what is economically possible"--

The Patent Wars

The Patent Wars PDF Author: Fred Warshofsky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
From the "Diaper Wars" that pitted Procter & Gamble against Kimberly-Clark to disputes over high-temperature superconductors, veteran technology writer Fred Warshofsky tracks patent litigation's path to becoming one of the most potent financial tools of the 1990s. The stakes are enormous. For example, Honeywell Inc. more than doubled its net income for the third quarter of 1992 despite lower operating revenue by winning some dozen patent infringement suits against Japanese camera makers, including a tidy $96 billion from Minolta. Japanese companies frequently win. In a revealing analysis of the patent wars in Japan, Warshofsky shows how Japanese industries surround basic patents with clusters of patent modifications. In the global winner-take-all battle, this strategy gives them effective control over the licensing and usefulness of the original invention. The patent game becomes more complicated with the development of each new product and technology. Nowhere is the phenomenon more evident than in software, semiconductors, and biotechnology. Warshofsky delves into each of these highly sophisticated industries. In the software industry, for instance, Warshofsky dissects patent battles such as Apple v. Microsoft and Borland v. Lotus that have made front-page headlines. The Patent Wars is the first book to take an incisive look at this new business offensive and its consequences, including hackers and piracy in cyberspace. As more and more companies deliberately strive to prohibit competition and innovation, this stimulating and highly informative book will become essential reading for people in business and finance, technology-watchers, and policymakers.

Innovators, Firms, and Markets

Innovators, Firms, and Markets PDF Author: Jonathan M. Barnett
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190908599
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
"This book presents a theoretical, historical and empirical account of the relationship between intellectual property rights, organizational type and market structure. Patents expand transactional choice by enabling smaller R&D-intensive firms to compete against larger firms that wield difficult-to-replicate financing, production and distribution capacities. In particular, patents enable upstream firms that specialize in innovation to exchange informational assets with downstream firms that specialize in commercialization, lowering capital and technical requirements that might otherwise impede entry. These theoretical expectations track a novel organizational history of the U.S. patent system during 1890-2006. Periods of strong patent protection tend to support innovation ecosystems in which smaller innovators can monetize R&D through financing, licensing and other relationships with funding and commercialization partners. Periods of weak patent protection tend to support innovation ecosystems in which innovation and commercialization mostly take place within the end-to-end structures of large integrated firms. The proposed link between IP rights and organizational type tracks evidence on historical and contemporary patterns in IP lobbying and advocacy activities. In general, larger and more integrated firms (outside pharmaceuticals) tend to advocate for weaker patents, while smaller and less integrated firms (and venture capitalists who back those firms) tend to advocate for stronger patents. Contrary to conventional assumptions, the economics, history and politics of the U.S. patent system suggest that weak IP rights often shelter large incumbents from the entry threat posed by smaller R&D-specialist entities"--

Patent Law in Global Perspective

Patent Law in Global Perspective PDF Author: Ruth L. Okediji
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199334277
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 770

Book Description
"This text addresses critical and timely questions in patent law from a truly global perspective, with contributions from leading patent law scholars from various countries and various disciplines. The rich scholarship featured reflects on a wide range of perspectives, offering insights and new approaches to evaluating key institutional, economic, doctrinal, and practical issues that are at the forefront of efforts to reform the global patent system, and to reconfigure geo-political interests in on-going multilateral, trilateral, and bilateral initiatives".--

The Democratization of Invention

The Democratization of Invention PDF Author: B. Zorina Khan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521811354
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
This book, first published in 2005, examines the evolution and impact of American intellectual property rights during the 'long nineteenth century'.

A History of the Early Patent Offices

A History of the Early Patent Offices PDF Author: Kenneth W. Dobyns
Publisher: Sergeant Kirkland's Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description


India and the Patent Wars

India and the Patent Wars PDF Author: Murphy Halliburton
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501713981
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Book Description
India and the Patent Wars contributes to an international debate over the costs of medicine and restrictions on access under stringent patent laws showing how activists and drug companies in low-income countries seize agency and exert influence over these processes. Murphy Halliburton contributes to analyses of globalization within the fields of anthropology, sociology, law, and public health by drawing on interviews and ethnographic work with pharmaceutical producers in India and the United States. India has been at the center of emerging controversies around patent rights related to pharmaceutical production and local medical knowledge. Halliburton shows that Big Pharma is not all-powerful, and that local activists and practitioners of ayurveda, India’s largest indigenous medical system, have been able to undermine the aspirations of multinational companies and the WTO. Halliburton traces how key drug prices have gone down, not up, in low-income countries under the new patent regime through partnerships between US- and India-based companies, but warns us to be aware of access to essential medicines in low- and middle-income countries going forward.

Patent Politics

Patent Politics PDF Author: Shobita Parthasarathy
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022643799X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Book Description
Over the past thirty years, the world’s patent systems have experienced pressure from civil society like never before. From farmers to patient advocates, new voices are arguing that patents impact public health, economic inequality, morality—and democracy. These challenges, to domains that we usually consider technical and legal, may seem surprising. But in Patent Politics, Shobita Parthasarathy argues that patent systems have always been deeply political and social. To demonstrate this, Parthasarathy takes readers through a particularly fierce and prolonged set of controversies over patents on life forms linked to important advances in biology and agriculture and potentially life-saving medicines. Comparing battles over patents on animals, human embryonic stem cells, human genes, and plants in the United States and Europe, she shows how political culture, ideology, and history shape patent system politics. Clashes over whose voices and which values matter in the patent system, as well as what counts as knowledge and whose expertise is important, look quite different in these two places. And through these debates, the United States and Europe are developing very different approaches to patent and innovation governance. Not just the first comprehensive look at the controversies swirling around biotechnology patents, Patent Politics is also the first in-depth analysis of the political underpinnings and implications of modern patent systems, and provides a timely analysis of how we can reform these systems around the world to maximize the public interest.