Hell freezes over as WSJ says patents stifle innovation

After Nobel prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and John Sulston last week, now the Wall Street Journal carries an article about the problem that the patent system has become. It's US-focused, but it pretty neatly outlines how the debate on a mild patent reform there sets the pharmaceutical industry against technology companies:

Yet the fault line over patent reform signals the
deeper problems. Many pharmaceutical companies lobbied against the
proposals, fearful of reduced value in their key intellectual property.
In contrast, most technology firms supported the reforms, worried more
about uncertainty in the law than about the value of their patents.

Both sides may be right. New empirical research by
Boston University law professors James Bessen and Michael Meurer,
reported in their book, "Patent Failure," found that the value of
pharmaceutical patents outweighed the costs of pharmaceutical-patent
litigation. But for all other industries combined, they estimate that
since the mid-1990s, the cost of U.S. patent litigation to alleged
infringers ($12 billion in legal and business costs in 1999) is greater
than the global profits that companies earn from patents (less than $4
billion in 1999). Since the 1980s, patent litigation has tripled and
the probability that a particular patent is litigated within four years
has more than doubled. Small inventors feel the brunt of the
uncertainty costs, since bigger companies only pay for rights they
think the system will protect.

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