Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk

James Bessen, Princeton University Press, Princeton, PA, and Michael J. Meurer, Princeton University Press, Princeton, PA

11/17/2008
(Original Publish Date: 11/10/2008)

In recent years, business leaders, policymakers, and inventors have complained to the media and to Congress that today’s patent system stifles innovation instead of fostering it. But like the infamous patent on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, much of the cited evidence about the patent system is pure anecdote — making realistic policy formation difficult. Is the patent system fundamentally broken, or can it be fixed with a few modest reforms? Moving beyond rhetoric, Patent Failure provides the first authoritative and comprehensive look at the economic performance of patents in forty years. James Bessen and Michael Meurer ask whether patents work well as property rights, and, if not, what institutional and legal reforms are necessary to make the patent system more effective.