Study Finds Patent Systems May Not Be an Effective Incentive to Encourage Invention of New Technologies

IRVINE, Calif.--(Business Wire)--
A new study published in The Columbia Science and Technology Law Review
challenges the traditional view that patents foster innovation, suggesting
instead that patents may harm new technology, economic activity, and societal
wealth. These results may have important policy implications because many
countries count on patent systems to spur new technology and promote economic
growth.

To test the hypothesis that patent systems promote technological innovation,
Bill Tomlinson of the University of California, and Andrew Torrance of the
University of Kansas School of Law, developed an online simulation game of the
patent system, PatentSim. Their results suggest that a patent system
underperforms a "commons," in which no patent protection is available, on
several important measures. Although these surprising results call into question
traditional justifications for patent systems, they do align with the
increasingly well-supported notion that user and open innovation can succeed
where patents may fail.

PatentSim uses an abstract model of the innovation process, a database of
potential innovations, and a network over which users may interact with one
another to license, assign, buy, infringe and enforce patents. PatentSim allows
users to simulate the innovation process in one of three scenarios: a patent
system, a "commons" system with no patents, or a system with both patents and
open source protection.

"In PatentSim, we found that the patent system did not work to spur innovation,"
says Tomlinson. "In fact, participants were more likely to innovate when there
was no intellectual property protection at all, or when they could open source
their innovations and share them with other people."

The researchers measured the efficacy of the patent system based on 1)
innovation - the number of unique inventions; 2) productivity - a measure of
economic activity; and 3) societal wealth - the ability to generate money.

"Current patent laws are based on assumptions that patents spur technological
progress that were considered settled more than a century ago, and that few have
questioned since then," says Torrance. "If it turns out that our laws are based
upon misinformation and bad assumptions, society may be failing to promote
beneficial new technologies that could improve potential quality of life."

More at: http://www.ics.uci.edu/community/news/press/index.php

The University of California, Irvine
Sherry Main, 949-824-1562
sherry@uci.edu

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