Do patents over-compensate innovators?

摘要

How much patent protection should be accorded inventors and innovators? Is protection too strong or too weak? Over the years,these questions have spawned heated controversies.Machlup and Penrose (1950) vividly recount the nineteenth-century debate that led such countries as Switzerland and the Netherlands to delay the adoption of patent legislation and even to repeal their patent laws for a time.In the 1970s and the 1980s,by contrast,stronger patent protection was widely advocated as a remedy for the productivity slowdown.Now,after more than two decades in which patent protection has been on the rise,economists are increasingly voicing concerns that today patent protection may be excessive.Proposals are again being advanced to weaken patent protection or abolish it outright (e.g.,Boldrin and Levine,2002),explicidy or implicidy arguing that patents substantially over-reward innovators with respect to the socially optimal level.