05.01.2018 - 18:26 [ Techdirt ]

Shocked, Shocked To Learn The Patent Office Is Structurally Designed To Approve Shit Patents

The book Innovation and Its Discontents, by Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner, was first published in 2004. We‘ve cited the book frequently around here, as it did a bang up job describing structural problems with our patent system (and the judicial review of patents). There were a few big points that it made about why our patent system was so fucked up, and a big one was the incentive structure that heavily incentivized approving patents rather than rejecting them…