Law Commons^™

Razing The Patent Bar, William Hubbard

All Faculty Scholarship

Innovation is vital to economic prosperity, and lawmakers consequently strive to craft patent laws that efficiently promote the discovery and commercialization of new inventions. Commentators have long recognized that legal fees are a significant cost affecting innovation, but remarkably a crucial driver of these costs has largely escaped scrutiny: the Patent Bar. Every year innovators spend billions of dollars on legalfees for representation in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ("USPTO"), where inventors apply for patents and potential infringers seek to invalidate issued patents. Supply in this essential legal services market, however, is sharply limited because patent law requires innovators …