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Patent Examination Priorities, Michael J. Meurer
Patent Examination Priorities, Michael J. Meurer
Faculty Scholarship
Measures that discourage excessive patenting and claiming, propose shared examination responsibilities, and increase staffing all have potential to raise examination quality and alleviate the patent application backlog. So far these measures have been too limited to have much impact, and there is insufficient evidence to reliably judge their effectiveness. In this Article, I consider a different approach to examination reform. I take as given a significant scarcity of examiner time, and I ask how the PTO should set examination priorities. In other words, how much of their eighteen hours should examiners devote to the various tasks they are expected to …
Of Patents And Property, Michael J. Meurer, James Bessen
Of Patents And Property, Michael J. Meurer, James Bessen
Faculty Scholarship
Do patents behave substantially like property rights in tangible assets, in that they encourage development and innovation? This article notes that historical evidence, cross-country evidence, economic experiments, and estimates of net benefits all indicate that general property rights institutions have a substantial direct effect on economic growth. Conversely, with a few important exceptions like chemicals and pharmaceuticals, empirical evidence indicates that intellectual property rights have at best only a weak and indirect effect on economic growth. Further, it appears that for public firms in most industries today, patents may actually discourage investment in innovation for fear of winding up on …
Pharmaceutical Innovation: Law & The Public's Health, Kevin Outterson
Pharmaceutical Innovation: Law & The Public's Health, Kevin Outterson
Faculty Scholarship
At last count, global pharmaceutical spending exceeded $750 billion. Unlike most medical products and services, many pharmaceuticals are sold at a price that greatly exceeds marginal cost. AIDS medicines that retail for over $10,000 per person per year in the United States can be produced generically at a marginal cost of less than $150. Patents and other related IP rights create these significant gaps between marginal cost and retail price, generating many billions of dollars in profits (patent rents) for companies.