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Patents And The Diffusion Of Technical Information, James Bessen
Patents And The Diffusion Of Technical Information, James Bessen
Faculty Scholarship
Does the disclosure requirement of the patent system encourage the diffusion of inventions? This paper builds a simple model where firms choose between patents and trade secrecy to protect inventions. Diffusion is not necessarily more likely with a patent system nor is the market for technology necessarily greater.
The Software Patent Experiment, Robert M. Hunt, James Bessen
The Software Patent Experiment, Robert M. Hunt, James Bessen
Faculty Scholarship
Over the past two decades, the scope of technologies that can be patented has been expanded to include many items previously thought unsuitable for patenting, for example, computer software. Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office grants 20,000 or more software patents a year. Conventional wisdom holds that extending patent protection to computer programs will stimulate research and development and, thus, increase the rate of innovation. In this article, Bob Hunt and Jim Bessen investigate whether this has, in fact, happened. They describe the spectacular growth in software patenting, who obtains patents, and the relationship between a sharp focus on …