Kaiser & Rønde 2004: A Danish View on Software Patents
-> [ Economic Studies | Denmark | Patent News ]
Ulrich Kaiser and Thomas Rønde, two Danish economists, explain the situation in Europe and Denmark concerning software patents after the decision of the European Parliament of September 2003 and review some of the economic literature on patents. The study was funded by the Danish Ministry of Economy. There is no date on the paper, but we guess that it was published in 2004.
The Paper
Structure and Quotes
Comments
Andre Rebentisch
Andre commented on a mailing list:
The reasoning is a little bit weak from methodological point of view but it is worth a read. A scientific literature based approach and clueless authors with some innovative ideas.
Some contributions of the authors are very silly, e.g. page 15 "Division of labour between copyright and patents where only the very novel inventions are protected by patent laws and all other inventions are protected by copyrights.
However they try to discuss the issue unbiased and provide the usual result. - patents less likely beneficial for dk than the US But the argument is here a "free ride": "since Denmark lacks a significant software industry"
They quote many players including Lutterbeck, Horns and Smets-solanes.
Hartmut Pilch
The paper tells the story of the patent directive and outlines much of the theoretical economic thinking on patents but, like many economists' papers, takes the governmental (patent office) rationale about the proposed patenting rules (e.g. "US patents software as such, we patent only inventions with a technical contribution") at face value and fails to look at the relation between such rules and the resulting patents. It only examines the relation between patents (as abstract entities in a fairly crude model) and economic output. Here it applies the usual critical wisdom of economists about the upsides and downsides of monopoly rights as instruments for securing return on innovation investments.
With a central link in the causal chain between legislation and economic effects missing, the study is unable to deliver on its promise of investigating the economic effects of legislatve proposals.
Benjamin Henrion
Hopefully it is considered as an economic study. I would entitled it as a litterature review. Where are the modelling equations?
