The opinion piece was written by L. Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of the Journal, and discusses the current state of patent law and intellectual property.
He wrote,
“The Patent Office now gets some 500 million applications a year, leading to litigation costs of over $10 billion a year to define who has what rights. As Judge Richard Posner has written, patents for ideas create the risk of 'enormous monopoly power (imagine if the first person to think up the auction had been able to patent it).' Studies indicate that aside from the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, the cost of litigation now exceeds the profits companies generate from licensing patents.”Crovitz continued,
“The Supreme Court may decide that more progress would be made with narrower definitions of what is patentable. A book on the U.S. approach to patents, 'Jefferson vs. the Patent Trolls' by Jeffrey Matsuura, makes the key point that 'intellectual property rights were not goals in and of themselves, but were instead a mechanism through which society attempted to facilitate creative collaboration.'"Some of you may recall that zealous stem cell patent protection has blocked research at Childrens Hospital of Orange County. And some have pointed to excessively tight control of IP as a main reason why nearly all biotech companies have been unprofitable for decades.
The three scientists who founded the company, Stem Cells Inc. of Palo Alto, Ca., which holds the patents in the Childrens Hospital case, have never spoken publicly on the issue, and we do not expect to hear from them.
It is unclear whether the Crovitz piece is available to non-subscribers. If you would like a copy, please email djensen@californiastemcellreport.com.
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