He said there was a growing movement among legal scholars and economists to back changes in patent law to protect the concept of independent invention.
"Exhibition data are particularly useful for studying the effects of patent laws on innovation because they measure economically useful innovation in a way that is independent of changes in patent laws," Professor Moser said.
He offers a bewildering potpourri of little tweaks here and there, including huge taxes on the salaries of hospital executives and hospital profits, capping profits on lab services, changes in patent laws and, of course, the eternal stalwart, malpractice reforms.
It also reviews the broader theoretical and empirical literature that bears on the expected effects of changes in patent policy.
It also means more predictability as companies will not be affected by changes in patent pools," says Lederer.
Despite the significance of the policy changes and the wide availability of detailed data relating to patenting, robust conclusions regarding the empirical consequences for technological innovation of changes in patent policy are few.
Luckily, recent changes in patent law have given these companies two new weapons with which to fight back and attack the validity of the troll's prized patent without incurring the costs of a full-blown litigation.
Changes in patent law, global competition, and the rise of several new technologies suggest that patents could be of greater value than secrecy for many innovative firms, particularly small firms that are unable to use market power or other factors to appropriate their investments in innovation.
This paper surveys the major changes in patent policy and practice that have occured in the last two decades in the U.S., and reviews the existing analyses by the economists that attempt to measure the impacts these changes have had on the processes of technological change.
Some take the view that positions may be shifting around local pharmaceutical production because of the increase in demand for medicines from the developing world coupled with increased availability of funding (especially for HIV/AIDS drugs), as well as because of the recent changes in patent rules.
