The Tragedy of the Anticommons Caused by Patent Bush and Reflection on the Patent Policy

摘要

Patent rights are exclusive in nature. The fact that too many parties enjoy the exclusion rights surrounding one product may quite likely lead to patent bush. Once patent bush gets in the way, subsequent researchers have either to pay a high price to get permission to from their preceding patent holders, or simply give up their research, meaning that when patent holders exercise their exclusion rights or do not offer their permission subsequent researches can hardly proceed, thus leading to resource underutilization, the tragedy of the anticommons. This has aroused people’s awareness that patents may act to hinder technological innovation and economic development and has prompted people to reflect the current patent policies so that an appropriate balance between the patent policy and the competition mechanism can be achieved.