Patent Law

For the Corporations

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

Michael Meurer, interviewed in Forbes, equated the worth of the patent system to its value to corporations:

For most firms, the headache of a patent lawsuit is greater than the benefit of the patents they get and can use against other people... The patent system can't work unless it provides an incentive to innovators. It managed to do that for the average firm in 1984 and for pharmaceutical companies in 1999.

Meurer blames patent attorneys and the courts:

People are using lawyers to help them create more property rights and fuzzier property rights. Fuzzy rights will benefit them as patent owners.

When asked: "lawyers are at the heart of the patent problem?", Meurer replied, "...so is the Federal Circuit."

The Federal Circuit needs to get serious about invalidating claims that are indefinite.

When asked about the best presidential candidate for patent reform:

 Obama. He had announcements in favor of patent reform. Obama also has Mark Lemley on his team, a patent law scholar that thinks about a lot of these issues the same way that I do.

Meurer is co-author of the book: Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk.

Thankfully, as shown by the book title, Meurer is careful not to apportion blame. Wink.

Meurer developed a cost-benefit analysis intended to reflect the holistic reality of the patent system and its value to all parties. But all it did was attempt to measure how corporations made out, leaving out non-corporate inventors.

By the late 1990s, the costs that patents imposed on public firms outweighed the benefits. This provides clear empirical evidence that the patent system is broken.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on March 20, 2008 (boomark / email).