Patent Search and Cumulative Innovation

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2014

Editor(s)

Michael B. Abramowicz, James E. Daily, F. Scott Kieff

ISBN

9781107709409

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Language

en-US

Abstract

My goal in this chapter is to modify a standard model of cumulative innovation to better account for some of the factors that cause patents (especially outside pharmaceutical technology) to perform badly as property. Bessen and Meurer (Reference Bessen and Meurer 2008) show that patents fail as property in the sense that they deliver small net rewards to innovators (even negative rewards), because they fail to communicate information about patent-based property boundaries to strangers. To lawyers this is known as failure of the notice function of property.

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