Century-Old Assumptions on Patents Questioned

Researchers from UC Irvine and Kansas School of Law created a computer program that models the current patent system to test whether it really fosters innovation (story here). What they found may force us to rethink our long held assumptions about patent law. Their research suggests that the current system does not foster innovation, but in fact stifles it.

"The software allows players to simulate the innovation process under a traditional patent system; a “commons” system, in which no patent protection is available; or a system with both patents and open-source protection....In PatentSim, we found that the patent system did not work to spur innovation,” said Tomlinson, associate professor of informatics. “In fact, participants were more likely to innovate when there was no intellectual property protection at all, or when they could open-source their innovations and share them with other people.”

Of course there needs to be more research into this area of law before we do anything premature like upend a century-old legal tradition that helped create the industrial and information revolutions. However, this research further solidifies the idea that Linux and other open-source software are not aberrations. In an era of collaboration and communication on a global scale, patent law may be holding humanity back from even greater innovation.