[Patents] PATNEWS: A critique of Bessen/Maskin's innovation and patents paper

[Ram'on Garc'ia Fern'andez ramon@jl1.quim.ucm.es]

On Fri, Feb 02, 2001 at 12:19:15AM -0500, Gregory Aharonian wrote:
> In the real world, is there any evidence that the explosion in (bad)
> software patents has stifled innovation and social welfare?  I offer
> some data to show that you can't answer this question YES or NO.
> ...

Don't be cynic.

You know perfectly that the bad impact of patents has been limited for
the ability of companies of adapting to it. Now companies fill patents
for every trivial idea, so that anyone that sues a company with a trivial
patent is infrining a patent of this company, and so this company can
coutersue.

But when the Court of Appleals of the Federal Circuit started its
activities of protecting trivial ideas, companies did not know it.
Kodak was caught surprised whey lost the lawsuit against Polaroid,
based on trivial patents. Kodak was forced to fire 700 (!!) employees,
to close a division, to throw lot of research work and to pay 
Polariod about 900 million dollars in damages. A message was sent
to the industry that trivial patents are now valid. And the industry
adapted to it.

I am almost sure that nothing of this is new to Gregory. 

Sice Gregory said, against very strong evidence, that the problem of
trivial patents is not a problem of law, I am starting to believe that
he is more concerned about extending to Europe his business of seeking
prior art than to improve the system.

Ramon