What's Wrong with the Patent System

It's not a secret that the U.S. patent system is in serious trouble. Professor Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School and Professor Adam B.Jaffe of Brandeis University provide some explanations to when, why, and how it all went wrong in "Innovations and Its Discontents", the book they co-authored and published late last year (October 2004). Professor Josh Lerner discussed some of the issues covered in the book in this interview.

According to the interview, between 1983 and 2002, the number of patents granted annually soared from 62,000 to 177,000. Swamped with about 350,000 patent applications each year, examiners are overwhelmed and unable to devote enough time to check out the validity of each one. The results? Such patents were issued as a "sealed crustless sandwich" filled with peanut butter and jelly; another for a “Method for Swinging on a Swing.” You be the judge. As many practitioners put it, the current patent system has created two sets of competitors — those who actually invent and make a product, and the so-called "paper competitors" who have intellectual property rights but aren’t involved in the industry in any real sense. Not good news for true inventors and innovators.

In their book, the authors offer three recommendations on how to fix the broken patent system, which you can find out here.

OK, gotta go finish my patent application about my "method of updating your blogs on your PDA while bungee jumping".