Posts Tagged: "patent monopoly"

The Myth of ‘Trivial’ Drug Patents

Critics of drug patents often claim that when initial drug patents expire, drug companies stuff their patent portfolios with “trivial” patents that unjustifiably extend their patent monopoly to keep the prices up.  This argument perpetuates common myths and misunderstandings that fail on several levels… In the last decade, large molecule biological drugs have come to the fore. They provide dramatic new treatments for some conditions but can be very expensive. It is difficult to develop inexpensive generic-type versions for biological drugs.

Is the Supreme Court anti-patent?

Is the Supreme Court anti-patent? it has been suggested to me that such rhetoric, whether true or not, is unhelpful and puts those urging pro-patent views on the defensive. If that is correct then it should be banned from our lexicon. But I still wonder how one can or should refer to Justices who repeatedly vote against the patent owner? Certainly, the Supreme Court is not pro-patent, and they are certainly showing no signs of being self-aware when it comes to the path of destruction they have cut through critical sectors of the American high-tech economy. But I guess that doesn’t make them anti-patent, or at least you can’t call them anti-patent because that is rude, or off putting, or offensive to those who hold the Court in high esteem. 

A Poor History of Wright Brothers Concludes they were Patent Trolls

In the first sentence of the entire article, the author falls prey to a misconception often parroted by those with anti-patent viewpoints, namely that patent protection is a “government-granted monopoly.” Yes, the patent is granted by the government, and yes, it offers an inventor the right to exclude others from the market, but a patent provides no promise of a monopoly or any market success whatsoever. More than 90 percent of patents cover technologies that will not be commercialized. If there’s no market, there’s no monopoly. Instead, patents help to create markets by creating an enforceable property right capable of attracting investment and warding off free-riders if in fact a market does ultimately exist… But the Mises Institute’s author even notes that Curtiss continued to design aircraft control methods that wouldn’t infringe on the Wright Brothers’ patent, an unwitting recognition of the fact that patent protection encourages innovators to find ways to invent without infringing on a patent.

Debunking the Myth that Patents Create a Monopoly

When there is no market there can never be a monopoly because you cannot be in exclusive control of a non-existent market, and you cannot manipulate prices when no one is willing to buy what you are offering. Indeed, the truth is that the vast majority of patents, upwards of 90% of patents (perhaps as high as 98% of patents) will result in rights being granted to cover a product or service that will not be commercialized at all, or if commercialized will lose money because too few people are interested. That doesn’t really sound like a monopoly, does it?

The patent views of Peter Thiel and what they mean for the Trump Administration

Although the tech industry is big in America, the industry itself was not big on the idea of a Trump presidency. Trump, however, did have one very vocal supporter from the tech community: German-American entrepreneur, billionaire venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel… There are inklings that the patent troll narrative might actually have sway with Thiel, despite his Silicon Valley outsider status. An article published in September 2014 by Bloomberg pertaining to a corporate restructuring of Intellectual Ventures (IV), a Patent Assertion Entity (PAE) often portrayed in the media as a patent troll, provides some clues. Thiel is quoted as saying: “I think IV is basically a parasitic tax on the tech industry.”