The Orange View (on hiatus) Because Apple is great but it isn't perfect

Patent wars hurt innovation

Steve Lohr has a solid overview of the disaster we've created for the economy with patents. Harvard prof Josh Lerner has the killer quote:

So the very innovation patents were intended to encourage, they say, suffers in the patent wars. "You'd much rather see Apple spend some of that $4 billion on new inventions, and Google invest that $12 billion to generate new knowledge," said Josh Lerner, an economist at the Harvard Business School. "It's a transfer of wealth from innovators to bondholders and stockholders who have no motivation to innovate. It's disturbing."
-NYT, August 17, 2011

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