[Patents] economic studies

[Gregory Aharonian srctran@world.std.com]

Bernard cites:
>   The theoretical and other economic literature does not demonstrate,
>   indeed casts doubt, on whether economic efficiency, i.e. increased
>   overall welfare, is achieved by having or making computer program
>   related inventions patentable.

Again, whoopee.  Without seeing the economic assumptions, and
simplifications made in these studies, as well as knowing the patent
world experience of the economists involved in these studies, I do
not put much faith in their conclusions.  For example, I have heard a
variety of economists talk about measuring the flow of information
between companies by measuring how they cite each others patents.
Yet many of these economists are unfamiliar with how patent searching
is done (often not by the inventors, meaning the citations don't
measure information flows) to the extent that it discredits their
conclusions.

That there are few economic studies to support software patenting means
little as well.  First, it is hard to measure the impact of patenting
for any field of technology.  Second, assuming patents have some
value in general, and that software patents are as much a part of the
patent process as any other field of technology, there is little interest
to study anything other than the general impact of patents.

So the reckless citing in this forum of economic studies whose assumptions
and qualifications is unknown proves nothing.  And relying on such studies
seems a good way of losing an argument.

So if Europe in general is serious about this issue, it might want to get
the EC to fund a comprehensive study of the impact of patents, past and
future, for all areas of technology.  Until then, randon citation of
random studies proves nothing.  My bet, and I would be glad to put my
money with my mouth is, is that the impacts of patents in a variety of
fields, software, hardware, etc., in terms of losses of freedom and
providing incentives to innovate, will be relatively the same.

And for the person who doesn't read English, I mentioned earlier that
IEEE publications and software publications in general are straining
the storage space and organizing time of librarians to simply point
out in terms of publication volume, that software patents are having
zero impact on the development and publications of new software ideas.
Zero impact.

Greg Aharonian