The cost of ideas

摘要

Intellectual property is the corner-stone of the modern knowledge economy. But one of the main forms of intellectual property, the patent-a temporary monopoly designed to provide an incentive to innovate-is increasingly being found wanting, even as the number of applications soars at patent offices around the world. America's patent system has "become sand rather than lubricant in the wheels of American progress", argue Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner in a new book, "Innovation and its Discontents: How our broken patent system is endangering innovation and progress and what to do about it" (published by Princeton University Press). The world's patent system remains splintered along national lines, yet the system's defects are felt everywhere.