Re: Industrial Organization Theory and Patents
by Corporate Patent Counsel
Posted July 08, 2011, 2:43 PM
Regarding Richard’s response to point 6, I think that argument goes too far. Couldn't that response be applied to nearly any change in administration/regulation to say that one firm is never advantaged over another because firm A can just reorganize itself to copy the advantage of firm B?
In the case of patents, one thing to keep in mind is that patents are issued to inventors, not firms. The inventor must be personally involved in the patent application drafting as he has to sign an oath stating that he is the inventor of the invention as claimed. Therefore, there is a limit to the degree to which patent-related activities can be outsourced.
Assume a world where professors are required to attest that papers they author represent their own research. As between the University of Chicago (where professors are required to teach and publish) and the Hoover Institution (where fellows are not required to teach), wouldn't the University of Chicago be advantaged by a rule that said that the first author to come up with an idea for a paper had the right to publish it, rather than the first to submit the paper, since the professor with teaching duties will likely be slower to submit than the fellow without? One could argue that U of C could just reorganize to divide its faculty into publishers and teachers, but this would likely diminish the quality of both.