We typically assume that intellectual property makes a substantial difference in regulating access to intellectual goods and thereby provides incentives for the production of intellectual goods. But the existence of alternative instruments by which to appropriate innovation returns suggests that...

Judicial decisions, agency actions and legislative enactments have promoted a creeping reversion toward the weak patent regime that prevailed for several decades preceding the establishment of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The pending Supreme Court case, Oil States Energy...

This comment by 25 law professors, economists and former United States government officials was submitted to the European Union Commission in response to a “call for evidence” on the licensing, litigation, and remedies of standard-essential patents (SEPs). It details the principal concepts...

This short contribution updates through 2018 the author’s prior empirical study on global innovation trends as indicated by USPTO patenting data during 1965-2015. The principal trends identified previously have largely continued, with the exception of a slight universal decline in annual...

Scholarly and popular commentary often assert that markets characterized by intensive patent issuance and enforcement suffer from “patent thickets” that suppress innovation. This assertion is difficult to reconcile with continuous robust levels of R&D investment, coupled with declining...

Legal scholars have tended to approach the licensing of intellectual property rights with skepticism, calling for legal intervention to protect the public domain against purported encroachment by IP licensors. Recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court are consistent with this view. This...

A largely unqualified consensus among substantial portions of the scholarly, policymaking, advocacy and business communities has taken the view that the U.S. patent system, since approximately the early 1980s, has endangered innovation by adopting historically strong forms of patent protection...

It is widely argued that international extension of the patent system hinders innovation and growth in developing countries by restricting access to technological inputs. I re-examine the connection between patents, innovation and development by assessing the extent to which the U.S. patent...

Since the Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in eBay, Inc. v. MercExchange, LLC, increasingly large portions of the patentee population have no realistic expectation of securing injunctive relief against adjudicated infringers. This judicially imposed quasi-compulsory licensing regime induces...