A Level Business Studies - To patent or not to patent?
To patent or not to patent? A passage from an 1851 issue of The Economist said that the patent system “excited fraud, stimulates men to run after schemes that may enable them to levy a tax on the public, begets disputes and quarrels betwixt inventors, provokes endless lawsuits [and] bestows rewards on the wrong persons”. This was written over 150 years ago, yet it is certainly still capable of doing all of those things today. The supposed evidence that the current patent system encourages investment into research that leads to innovation is actually weak. A large amount of recent in research years, including a 2004 study by America’s National Academy of Sciences, suggests that with a few exceptions such as medicine, society as a whole might actually benefit without patents. This is because there are issues and ethical objections regarding patents and the high prices for medication that they enable creators to change. The people who need these drugs most – namely...