Patent Failure

How Judges,
Bureaucrats,
and Lawyers
Put Innovators at Risk

by James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer

Princeton University Press
March 2008

Chapters

Introduction: The Argument in Brief
Why Property Rights Work, How Property Rights Fail
If You Can’t Tell the Boundaries, Then It Ain’t Property
Survey of Empirical Research: Do Patents Work as Property?
What Are US Patents Worth to their Owners?
The Cost of Disputes
How Important is the Failure of Patent Notice?
Small Inventors
Abstract Patents and Software
Making Patents Perform as Property
Reforms to Improve Notice
Conclusion: A Glance Forward
References

Links

Order the book

News, Reviews

Strategy + Business “Best Business Books 2008: Innovation”
Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice
Wall Street Journal
Nature
Ars Technica
LA Times
Times Higher Education
RedHat Magazine
Financial Times
Huffington Post
Economic Principals
Forbes.com
Symposium, Univ. of Georgia
New York Times

Some Associated Papers

The Patent Litigation Explosion

Estimates of Firms' Patent Rents from Firm Market Value

The Value of U.S. Patents by Owner and Patent Characteristics

Patent Litigation with Endogenous Disputes
(AER 5/2006)

The Private Costs of Patent Litigation

Related Audio/Video

Podcast of Mike Meurer onHearsay Culture

Patent Failure, Jim Bessen at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society

Property Rights and Patent Reform Lecture by Michael Meurer at the Progress and Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit 2007

The Empirical Evidence on Patents: Do They Work Like Property? Lecture by James Bessen at the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke University, February 2006

Empirical Evidence on Software Patents (also slides) Conference presentation by James Bessen at “Software Patents: A Time for Change?”, Boston University School of Law, November 2006

Legal Perspectives on Software Patents (also slides) Conference presentation by Michael J. Meurer at “Software Patents: A Time for Change?”, Boston University School of Law, November 2006