Dan Swirsky AlphaPatent Associates Ltd. I might be taking that one down as well. We could not agree with you more that patent policy should not be based on overly simple economic models. But please don't blame us for this unfortunate development. Fact is, for nearly 20 years U.S. patent policy has been guided by an overly simple model that Todd Dickinson and most patent attorneys recite with little provocation.
Stronger patents are always better.
This simple argument appears to be behind the subject matter extension of patents and the lowering of the non-obviousness standards. It has also been used to argue for the extension of the patent term. In a more dynamic world, stronger patents may actually reduce innovation. Our point is not that patents are necessarily and always bad, but that policy should be careful and balanced. Indeed, prior to the 1980s, both economic theory and legal theory took a balanced view, recognizing both benefits and costs to patents and calling for limits on patent protection.