Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It (Hardcover)

by Adam B. Jaffe (Author), Josh Lerner (Author) "Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries , the United States evolved from a colonial backwater to become the pre-eminent economic and technological..." (more)
Key Phrases: experimental use exception, bad patents, patent quality, United States, Supreme Court, The Dark Side of Patents (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Mr. Jaffe's and Mr. Lerner's book offers a lucid, entertaining, and sobering look at the American patent system." -- Hal R. Varian, The New York Times

"This lucid book should have a place on the shelves of every technical library". -- Anthony Anderson, New Scientist

"offers a detailed plan to fix the system by improving the quality of patents and reducing uncertainty". -- Mark Voorhees, IP Law & Business

Review
A lucid, entertaining and sobering look at the American patent system.
(Hal R. Varian The New York Times )

A disturbing analysis of how the patent system, the heart of the knowledge economy, is rotten.
(The Economist )

This book sounds an alarm bell that is hard to ignore.
(Giuseppe Ammendola American Foreign Policy Interests )

A timely and concise book that presents a comprehensive and convincing argument about . . . changes in U.S. patent law beginning in 1982.
(Zainub Verjee Leonardo Reviews )

Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner have given us a wonderfully timely book--and also one that is beautifully executed.
(Rochelle Dreyfuss Michigan Law Review )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (September 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 069111725X
• ISBN-13: 978-0691117256
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #739,560 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eloquent, December 9, 2004

By	Peter McCluskey (Mountain View, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book presents a clear, concise and convincing argument that subtle changes in U.S. laws starting in 1982 have broken a patent system that was working reasonably well until then. It will be more effective at convincing the average person than most other attempts have been, both because of its style and because it shows that the changes which broke the system shouldn't have been expected to help anyone other than patent lawyers. Their analysis will be useful in helping to avoid the takeover of other agencies by special interests.
Their description of how the system should be fixed is less impressive. Their summary of proposed changes strangely fails to include undoing the change in appeals court jurisdiction which they suggest was a primary cause of the problems. Their argument in favor of patenting software, business practices, etc. is more radical than they seem to realize, as it appears to imply that patents should also be extended to mathematical theorems, yet they act as if the burden of proof should be on their critics.
Their confidence that a traditional patent system is better than no patents is unconvincing (but they do a good job of explaining why it is hard to know what the best system is). They support their position by a few examples such as Xerox, whose copier wouldn't have been invented as it was without patent protection. But it's much harder than they imply to determine that a copier wouldn't have been invented some other way a few years later.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars it's OK, June 4, 2007

By	Joe Omalley (san francisco) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It (Paperback)

Since the authors are economists I was hoping for an economic analysis of our current patent system like Schiff in his "Industrialization without National Patents" does for the international patent system of the 1800s. Instead it is a work of persuasion meant to sell the author's policy suggestions.

This means that the authors spend a lot of time talking about silly granted patents even though the authors later admit such patents are pretty unavoidable. No patent office has the resources to avoid granting some bad patents.

The author's policy suggestions include a revised reexamination system where patent owners would have to post $50,000 bond to defend a reexamination. I am no phyllis schlafly, but such a system would really favor big companies.

The authors are right that the creation of the CAFC in 1982 has resulted in a strengthening of patents. A lot of this is just a result of a new post-1982 uniformity in the case law.

Some signs of the waning of patents are showing. The CAFC, and now the supreme court, are ruling more for defendants in patent lawsuits. Additionally, in the patent office, the allowance rate of patents has declined from a peak of 71% in 2000 to 54% in 2006.

8 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Patent Medicine, May 31, 2006

By	Thomas G. Field, Jr. (Concord, NH) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Begining with unsupported assertions about the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and overblown conclusions about the consequences of changes in funding for the Patent and Trademark Office, the authors offer cures for diseases they do not understand.

I haven't seen or heard it much lately, but, when I grew up, "patent medicine" was synonymous with quackery and worthless nostrums. It is, indeed, ironic that they chose that very term to head the section in which they set out the goals of their book.