I don't buy it. Another study showed a net loss:<p><a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140416/04183626928/patent-litigation-cost-us-business-about-trillion-dollars-quarter-century-outweighing-benefits.shtml" rel="nofollow">https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140416/04183626928/paten...</a><p>It's humorous that they trot out the definition of innovation:
"make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas or products"
A patent explicitly forbids you to make changes on something already established. Want to make an innovation on a processor that already exists? Sorry, patent! You'll have to wait nearly 2 decades to make your innovation.<p>Plus it just doesn't pass the smell test. They're basically claiming that if companies spent billions of more dollars on innovation instead of patent litigation we would have <i>less</i> innovation!?<p>The j-core open processor and RISC-V instruction set are only possible because of patents that expired. Imagine what web development would be like if someone had patented using xmlhttprequest to update the DOM and info in the DOM. Would innovation have increased or lagged?<p>Patents quite literally create monopolies. If monopolies are so good, why does anti-trust exist? I think it's quite obvious that patents stifle innovation. Oh yes, they may provide a legal method for people to rent-seek, and make lots of money through extraction, but they definitely slow the rate of innovation.