Lipitor, a cholesterol-reducing drug taken on an ongoing basis, generated over $105 billion dollars

In recent times, patent wars have been increasingly covered in media – most notably the smartphone patent wars. Patents lakeside mall stores filed by these companies can very general, an example being Apple s slide to unlock (U.S. Patent No. 8,046,721) feature on the iPhone lockscreen. With concepts so general, it can be easily seen how other companies could accidentally infringe the patent and use the same idea. It might seem that the objective of these patents lakeside mall stores have become lakeside mall stores tools for hoarding.
Then again, the gigantic costs of research and development are nothing to dismiss. Research and Development (R&D) is often a major determining factor for the longevity of a company, due to inherently defining lakeside mall stores their ability to compete in the corporate sphere. With especial importance to the industries biotechnology and information technology, the economic value of the ensuing creations lakeside mall stores are vast.
Lipitor, a cholesterol-reducing drug taken on an ongoing basis, generated over $105 billion dollars of revenue for the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer from 1997 to 2009. Without the key legal provisions of intellectual property associated with Lipitor, however, the revenues and profits observed would have been substantially less. Without the company s patent protection of the drug, the events that would have transpired are exemplified in the events that have occurred since its expiration in 2011. Currently, due to the extinction of legal restrictions, generic versions of the drug manufactured by Pfizer s competitors, lakeside mall stores at often cheaper prices, have cut into their profits, thereby progressively reducing lakeside mall stores its economic value.
As such, the advent of patent protection lakeside mall stores as an incentivising factor has undoubtedly contributed to the overall propagation of R&D. Without these structural pillars to rein in potential exploitation, companies would logically possess no desire to allocate capital into a product that would inevitably supplement a competitor s own profits from the outset.
There are also downsides to patents, the main two being the creation of monopolies lakeside mall stores and patent trolls. In all economic viewpoints, whether it be Neo-classical or Keynesian, monopolies and their resulting economic effects have been criticised at every opportunity; they prevent society from being able to access the new innovations at competitive prices, hampering the elusive efficient allocation of resources that is so sought after in economics. In the case of patents, however, perhaps the trade-off is worth it. Innovation is the only thing that will drive us forward in a developed society, so the negative of a temporary misallocation of resources is fairly mitigated.
Patent trolls, on the other hand, aren t so beneficial. They exploit the patent system and by doing so cost the economy through lost potential innovation and therefore lost potential revenue. lakeside mall stores Patents are meant to encourage R&D in companies as it have a positive effect on society.
Patent trolls or non-practicing entities (NPEs) are individuals or companies that buy up patents from entities that are usually going bankrupt (at a low price) and use the patents for the purpose of launching patent infringement lawsuits on companies. These patent trolls collect large amounts of patents and use them to extract large sums of money from companies by threatening to go to court. Trials are very costly and are unpredictable, so many cases are settled outside of court for a smaller amount (compared to court and licensing fees). Trolls face no risk by taking companies to court as they are not required to pay damages if they lose, allowing them to take minor possible infringements to court given the disincentive for their targets to go to court and pay legal fees.
A recent study by James Bessen and Michael Meurer, who have studied and written a book about the failure of the patent system, argued that patent trolls cost large innovative companies $29 billion a year in direct costs in the US alone. This amount is close to 10 per cent of the approximately $247 billion lakeside mall stores spent per year on R&D in the US. They also found that the mean lawsuit cost big firms $7.27 million and for small-to-medium firms it was $1.33 million. These numbers show the extent of the consequences of these trolls, especially given that they own thousands of patents. From an economic viewpoint, this amount could be better spent on developing better products through more R&D or providing more liquidity to our recently lakeside mall stores struggling capital markets, but has instead gone to unscrupulous patent trolls who take advantage of the system for personal gain.
That being said, this mightn t be due to the patents themselves, but instead due to the system through which we use these legal instruments to protect ourselves. This misallocation of resources seems to be more of a symptom than a problem in and of itself. More effective regulation should be discussed, whether it be through narrower protection, decreased transferab