Archives For Intellectual property

A Few Questions (and Even Fewer Answers) About What Artificial Intelligence Will Mean for Copyright

Kristian Stout — 1 February 2023

*Output of the LG Research AI to the prompt: “a system of copyright for artificial intelligence”*

Not only have digital-image generators like Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and Midjourney—which make use of deep-learning models and other artificial-intelligence (AI) systems—created some incredible (and sometimes creepy – see above) visual art, but they’ve engendered a good deal of controversy, as well. Human artists have banded together as part of a fledgling anti-AI campaign; lawsuits have been filed; and policy experts have been trying to think through how these machine-learning systems interact with various facets of the law.

Debates about the future of AI have particular salience for intellectual-property rights. Copyright is notoriously difficult to protect online, and these expert systems add an additional wrinkle: it can at least argued that their outputs can be unique creations. There are also, of course, moral and philosophical objections to those arguments, with many grounded in the supposition that only a human (or something with a brain, like humans) can be creative.

Leaving aside for the moment a potentially pitched battle over the definition of “creation,” we should be able to find consensus that at least some of these systems produce unique outputs and are not merely cutting and pasting other pieces of visual imagery into a new whole. That is, at some level, the machines are engaging in a rudimentary sort of “learning” about how humans arrange colors and lines when generating images of certain subjects. The machines then reconstruct this process and produce a new set of lines and colors that conform to the patterns they found in the human art.

But that isn’t the end of the story. Even if some of these systems’ outputs are unique and noninfringing, the way the machines learn—by ingesting existing artwork—can raise a number of thorny issues. Indeed, these systems are arguably infringing copyright during the learning phase, and such use may not survive a fair-use analysis.

We are still in the early days of thinking through how this new technology maps onto the law. Answers will inevitably come, but for now, there are some very interesting questions about the intellectual-property implications of AI-generated art, which I consider below.

The Points of Collision Between Intellectual Property Law and AI-Generated Art

AI-generated art is not a single thing. It is, rather, a collection of differing processes, each with different implications for the law. For the purposes of this post, I am going to deal with image-generation systems that use “generated adversarial networks” (GANs) and diffusion models. The various implementations of each will differ in some respects, but from what I understand, the ways that these techniques can be used generate all sorts of media are sufficiently similar that we can begin to sketch out some of their legal implications.

A (very) brief technical description

This is a very high-level overview of how these systems work; for a more detailed (but very readable) description, see here.

A GAN is a type of machine-learning model that consists of two parts: a generator and a discriminator. The generator is trained to create new images that look like they come from a particular dataset, while the discriminator is trained to distinguish the generated images from real images in the dataset. The two parts are trained together in an adversarial manner, with the generator trying to produce images that can fool the discriminator and the discriminator trying to correctly identify the generated images.

A diffusion model, by contrast, analyzes the distribution of information in an image, as noise is progressively added to it. This kind of algorithm analyzes characteristics of sample images—like the distribution of colors or lines—in order to “understand” what counts as an accurate representation of a subject (i.e., what makes a picture of a cat look like a cat and not like a dog).

For example, in the generation phase, systems like Stable Diffusion start with randomly generated noise, and work backward in “denoising” steps to essentially “see” shapes:

The sampled noise is predicted so that if we subtract it from the image, we get an image that’s closer to the images the model was trained on (not the exact images themselves, but the distribution – the world of pixel arrangements where the sky is usually blue and above the ground, people have two eyes, cats look a certain way – pointy ears and clearly unimpressed).

It is relevant here that, once networks using these techniques are trained, they do not need to rely on saved copies of the training images in order to generate new images. Of course, it’s possible that some implementations might be designed in a way that does save copies of those images, but for the purposes of this post, I will assume we are talking about systems that save known works only during the training phase. The models that are produced during training are, in essence, instructions to a different piece of software about how to start with a text prompt from a user—a palette of pure noise—and progressively “discover” signal in that image until some new image emerges.

Input-stage use of intellectual property

The creators of OpenAI, one of the most popular AI tools, are not shy about their use of protected works in the training phase of AI algorithms. In comments to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), they note that:

…[m]odern AI systems require large amounts of data. For certain tasks, that data is derived from existing publicly accessible “corpora”… of data that include copyrighted works. By analyzing large corpora (which necessarily involves first making copies of the data to be analyzed), AI systems can learn patterns inherent in human-generated data and then use those patterns to synthesize similar data which yield increasingly compelling novel media in modalities as diverse as text, image, and audio. (emphasis added).

Thus, at the training stage, the most popular forms of machine-learning systems require making copies of existing works. And where the material being used is either not in the public domain or is not licensed, an infringement occurs (as Getty Images notes in a suit against Stability AI that it recently filed). Thus, some affirmative defense is needed to excuse the infringement.

Toward this end, OpenAI believes that its algorithmic training should qualify as a fair use. Other major services that use these AI techniques to “learn” from existing media would likely make similar arguments. But, at least in the way that OpenAI has framed the fair-use analysis (that these uses are sufficiently “transformative”), it’s not clear that they should qualify.

The purpose and character of the use

In brief, fair use—found in 17 USC § 107—provides for an affirmative defense against infringement when the use is “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching…, scholarship, or research.” When weighing a fair-use defense, a court must balance a number of factors:

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

OpenAI’s fair-use claim is rooted in the first factor: the nature and character of the use. I should note, then, that what follows is solely a consideration of Factor 1, with special attention paid to whether these uses are “transformative.” But it is important to stipulate fair-use analysis is a multi-factor test and that, even within the first factor, it’s not mandatory that a use be “transformative.” It is entirely possible that a court balancing all of the factors could, indeed, find that OpenAI is engaged in fair use, even if it does not agree that it is “transformative.”

Whether the use of copyrighted works to train an AI is “transformative” is certainly a novel question, but it is likely answered through an observation that the U.S. Supreme Court made in Campbell v. Acuff Rose Music:

[W]hat Sony said simply makes common sense: when a commercial use amounts to mere duplication of the entirety of an original, it clearly “supersede[s] the objects,”… of the original and serves as a market replacement for it, making it likely that cognizable market harm to the original will occur… But when, on the contrary, the second use is transformative, market substitution is at least less certain, and market harm may not be so readily inferred.

A key question, then, is whether training an AI on copyrighted works amounts to mere “duplication of the entirety of an original” or is sufficiently “transformative” to support a fair-use finding. Open AI, as noted above, believes its use is highly transformative. According to its comments:

Training of AI systems is clearly highly transformative. Works in training corpora were meant primarily for human consumption for their standalone entertainment value. The “object of the original creation,” in other words, is direct human consumption of the author’s expression. Intermediate copying of works in training AI systems is, by contrast, “non-expressive” the copying helps computer programs learn the patterns inherent in human-generated media. The aim of this process—creation of a useful generative AI system—is quite different than the original object of human consumption. The output is different too: nobody looking to read a specific webpage contained in the corpus used to train an AI system can do so by studying the AI system or its outputs. The new purpose and expression are thus both highly transformative.

But the way that Open AI frames its system works against its interests in this argument. As noted above, and reinforced in the immediately preceding quote, an AI system like DALL-E or Stable Diffusion is actually made of at least two distinct pieces. The first is a piece of software that ingests existing works and creates a file that can serve as instructions to the second piece of software. The second piece of software then takes the output of the first part and can produce independent results. Thus, there is a clear discontinuity in the process, whereby the ultimate work created by the system is disconnected from the creative inputs used to train the software.

Therefore, contrary to what Open AI asserts, the protected works are indeed ingested into the first part of the system “for their standalone entertainment value.” That is to say, the software is learning what counts as “standalone entertainment value” and therefore, the works mustbe used in those terms.

Surely, a computer is not sitting on a couch and surfing for its own entertainment. But it is solely for the very “standalone entertainment value” that the first piece of software is being shown copyrighted material. By contrast, parody or “remixing” uses incorporate the work into some secondary expression that transforms the input. The way these systems work is to learn what makes a piece entertaining and then to discard that piece altogether. Moreover, this use of art qua art most certainly interferes with the existing market insofar as this use is in lieu of reaching a licensing agreement with rightsholders.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dealt with an analogous case. In American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, the 2nd Circuit considered whether Texaco’s photocopying of scientific articles produced by the plaintiffs qualified for a fair-use defense. Texaco employed between 400 and 500 research scientists and, as part of supporting their work, maintained subscriptions to a number of scientific journals. It was common practice for Texaco’s scientists to photocopy entire articles and save them in a file.

The plaintiffs sued for copyright infringement. Texaco asserted that photocopying by its scientists for the purposes of furthering scientific research—that is to train the scientists on the content of the journal articles—should count as a fair use, at least in part because it was sufficiently “transformative.” The 2nd Circuit disagreed:

The “transformative use” concept is pertinent to a court’s investigation under the first factor because it assesses the value generated by the secondary use and the means by which such value is generated. To the extent that the secondary use involves merely an untransformed duplication, the value generated by the secondary use is little or nothing more than the value that inheres in the original. Rather than making some contribution of new intellectual value and thereby fostering the advancement of the arts and sciences, an untransformed copy is likely to be used simply for the same intrinsic purpose as the original, thereby providing limited justification for a finding of fair use… (emphasis added).

As in the case at hand, the 2nd Circuit observed that making full copies of the scientific articles was solely for the consumption of the material itself. A rejoinder, of course, is that training these AI systems surely advances scientific research and, thus, does foster the “advancement of the arts and sciences.” But in American Geophysical Union, where the secondary use was explicitly for the creation of new and different scientific outputs, the court still held that making copies of one scientific article in order to learn and produce new scientific innovations did not count as “transformative.”

What this case represents is that one cannot merely state that some social goal will be advanced in the future by permitting an exception to copyright protection today. As the 2nd Circuit put it:

…the dominant purpose of the use is a systematic institutional policy of multiplying the available number of copies of pertinent copyrighted articles by circulating the journals among employed scientists for them to make copies, thereby serving the same purpose for which additional subscriptions are normally sold, or… for which photocopying licenses may be obtained.

The secondary use itself must be transformative and different. Where an AI system ingests copyrighted works, that use is simply not transformative; it is using the works in their original sense in order to train a system to be able to make other original works. As in American Geophysical Union, the AI creators are completely free to seek licenses from rightsholders in order to train their systems.

Finally, there is a sense in which this machine learning might not infringe on copyrights at all. To my knowledge, the technology does not itself exist, but if it were possible for a machine to somehow “see” in the way that humans do—without using stored copies of copyrighted works—merely “learning” from those works, such as we can call it learning, probably would not violate copyright laws.

Do the outputs of these systems violate intellectual property laws?

The outputs of GANs and diffusion models may or may not violate IP laws, but there is nothing inherent in the processes described above to dictate that they must. As noted, the most common AI systems do not save copies of existing works, but merely “instructions” (more or less) on how to create new works that conform to patterns they found by examining existing work. If we assume that a system isn’t violating copyright at the input stage, it’s entirely possible that it can produce completely new pieces of art that have never before existed and do not violate copyright.

They can, however, be made to violate IP rights. For example, trademark violations appear to be one of the most popular uses of these AI systems by end users. To take but one example, a quick search of Google Images for “midjourney iron man” returns a slew of images that almost certainly violate trademarks for the character Iron Man. Similarly, these systems can be instructed to generate art that is not just “in the style” of a particular artist, but that very closely resembles existing pieces. In this sense, the system would be making a copy that theoretically infringes.

There is a common bug in such systems that leads to outputs that are more likely to violate copyright in this way. Known as “overfitting,” the training leg of these AI systems can be presented with samples that contain too many instances of a particular image. This leads to a data set that contains too much information about the specific image, such that when the AI generates a new image, it is constrained to producing something very close to the original.

An argument can also be made that generating art “in the style of” a famous artist violates moral rights (in jurisdictions where such rights exist).

At least in the copyright space, cases like Sony are going to become crucial. Does the user side of these AI systems have substantial noninfringing uses? If so, the firms that host software for end users could avoid secondary-infringement liability, and the onus would fall on users to avoid violating copyright laws. At the same time, it seems plausible that legislatures could place some obligation on these providers to implement filters to mitigate infringement by end users.

Opportunities for New IP Commercialization with AI

There are a number of ways that AI systems may inexcusably infringe on intellectual-property rights. As a best practice, I would encourage the firms that operate these services to seek licenses from rightsholders. While this would surely be an expense, it also opens new opportunities for both sides to generate revenue.

For example, an AI firm could develop its own version of YouTube’s ContentID that allows creators to opt their work into training. For some well-known artists this could be negotiated with an upfront licensing fee. On the user-side, any artist who has opted in could then be selected as a “style” for the AI to emulate. When users generate an image, a royalty payment to the artist would be created. Creators would also have the option to remove their influence from the system if they so desired.

Undoubtedly, there are other ways to monetize the relationship between creators and the use of their work in AI systems. Ultimately, the firms that run these systems will not be able to simply wish away IP laws. There are going to be opportunities for creators and AI firms to both succeed, and the law should help to generate that result.

In Copyright, Intellectual Property, Platforms, Truth on the Market artificial intelligence, copyright law, Intellectual property, licensing, Patents, Sony

Patent Eligibility, Competition, Innovation, Congress, and the Supreme Court

Alden Abbott — 6 July 2022

A highly competitive economy is characterized by strong, legally respected property rights. A failure to afford legal protection to certain types of property will reduce individual incentives to participate in market transactions, thereby reducing the effectiveness of market competition. As the great economist Armen Alchian put it, “[w]ell-defined and well-protected property rights replace competition by violence with competition by peaceful means.”

In particular, strong and well-defined intellectual-property rights complement and enhance market competition, thereby promoting innovation. As the U.S. Justice Department’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division put it in 2012: “[t]he successful promotion of innovation and creativity requires a [sic] both competitive markets and strong intellectual property rights.”

In the realm of intellectual property, patent rights are particularly effective in driving innovation by supporting a market for invention in several critical ways, as Northwestern University’s Daniel F. Spulber has explained:

Patents support the establishment of the market [for invention] in several key ways. First, patents provide a system of intellectual property (IP) rights that increases transaction efficiencies and stimulates competition by offering exclusion, transferability, disclosure, certification, standardization, and divisibility. Second, patents provide efficient incentives for invention, innovation, and investment in complementary assets so that the market for inventions is a market for innovative control. Third, patents as intangible real assets promote the financing of invention and innovation.

It thus follows that weak, ill-defined patent rights create confusion, thereby undermining effective competition and innovation.

The Supreme Court’s Undermining of Patentability

Regrettably, the U.S. Supreme Court has, of late, been oblivious to this reality. Over roughly the past decade, several Court decisions have weakened incentives to patent by engendering confusion regarding the core question of what subject matter is patentable. Those decisions represent an abrupt retreat from decades of textually based case law that recognized the broad scope of patentable subject matter.

As I explained in a 2019 Speech to the IP Watchdog Institute Patent Masters Symposium (footnotes omitted):

Confusion about what is patentable lies at the heart of recent discussions of reform to Section 101 of the Patent Act [35 U.S. Code § 101] – the statutory provision that describes patentable subject matter. Section 101 plainly states that “[w]hoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the [other] conditions and requirements of this title.” This language basically says that patentable subject matter covers everything new and useful that is invented or discovered. For many years, however, the Supreme Court has recognized three judicially created exceptions to patent eligibility, providing that you cannot patent: (1) laws of nature, (2) natural phenomena, or (3) abstract ideas. Even with these exceptions, the scope for patentability was quite broad from 1952 (when the modern version of the Patent Act was codified) until roughly 2010.
But over the past decade, the Supreme Court has cut back significantly on what it deems patent eligible, particularly in such areas as biotechnology, computer-implemented inventions, and software. As a result, today “there are many other parts of the world that have more expansive views of what can be patented, including Europe, Australia, and even China.” A key feature of the changes has been the engrafting of case law requirements that patentable eligible subject matter meet before a patent is granted, found in other sections of the Patent Act, onto the previously very broad language of Section 101.

As IPWatchdog President and CEO Gene Quinn explained in a 2019 article, “the real mischief” of recent Supreme Court case law (and, in particular, the 2012 Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus decision) is that it reads requirements of other Patent Act provisions (dealing with novelty, obviousness, and description) into Section 101. That approach defies the plain expansive language of Section 101 and is at odds with earlier Supreme Court case law, which had deemed such an approach totally inappropriate. As such, according to Quinn:

Today, thanks to Mayo, decision makers consider whether claims are new, nonobvious and even properly described all under a Section 101 patent eligibility analysis, which makes the remainder of the patentability sections of the statute superfluous. Indeed, with Mayo, the Supreme Court has usurped Congressional authority over patentability; an authority that is explicitly granted to Congress in the Constitution itself. This usurpation of power is not only wreaking havoc on American innovation, but it has wrought havoc on the delicate balance of power between the Supreme Court and Congress.

Another Supreme Court decision on Section 101 deserves mention. In Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank (2014), the Court construed Mayo as establishing a two-part Section 101 test for patentable subject matter, which involved:

Determining whether the patent claims are directed to a patent-ineligible concept; and
Determining whether the claim’s elements, considered both individually and as an ordered combination, transform the nature of the claims into a patent-eligible application.

This “test,” which was pulled out of thin air, went far beyond the text of Section 101, and involved considerations properly assigned to other provisions of the Patent Act.

Flash forward to last week. The Supreme Court on June 30 denied certiorari in American Axle & Mfg. Inc. v. Neapco Holdings, a case raising the question whether a patent that claims a process for manufacturing an automobile driveshaft that simultaneously reduces two types of driveshaft vibration is patent-eligible under Section 101. Underlying the uncertainty (one might say vacuity) of the Mayo-Alice “principle,” a divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (with six judges unsuccessfully voting in favor of rehearing en banc) had found the patent claim ineligible, given the Supreme Court’s Mayo and Alice decisions. Amazingly, a classic type of mechanical invention, at the very heart of traditional notions of patenting, somehow had failed the patent-eligibility test, a result no patent-law observer would have dreamed of prior to the Mayo-Alice duet.

Commendably, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar in May 2022 filed a brief in support of the grant of certiorari in American Axle. In short:

The SG’s brief sa[id] that inventions like the one at issue in American Axle have “[h]istorically…long been viewed as paradigmatic examples of the ‘arts’ or ‘processes’ that may receive patent protection if other statutory criteria are satisfied” and that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit “erred in reading this Court’s precedents to dictate a contrary conclusion.”
The brief explain[ed] in no uncertain terms that claim 22 of the patent at issue in the case does not “simply describe or recite” a natural law and ultimately should have been held patent eligible.

In light of Solicitor General Prelogar’s filing, the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari in American Axle can only be read as a clear signal to the bar that it does not intend to back down from or clarify the application of Mayo and Alice. This has serious negative ramifications for the health of the U.S. patent system. As Michael Borella—a computer scientist and chair of the Software and Business Methods Practice Group at McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP—explains:

In denying certiorari in American Axle & Mfg. Inc. v. Neapco Holdings LLC, the Supreme Court has in essence told the patent community to “deal with it.” That operative ‘it’ is the obtuse and uncertain state of patent-eligibility, where even tangible inventions like garage door openers, electric vehicle charging stations, and mobile phones are too abstract for patenting. The Court has created a system that favors large companies over startups and individual inventors by making the fundamental decision of whether even to seek patent protection akin to shaking a Magic 8 Ball for guidance.

The solution, according to former Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel, is prompt congressional action:

The Supreme Court’s decisions in the last decade have confused and distorted the law of eligibility. … From 1981 to 2012 … the law was stable and yielded good outcomes in specific cases. Then came Mayo and later, Alice. Now, it is a mess: illogical, unpredictable, chaotic. Bad policy for important innovation including for promoting human health. Congress needs to rescue the innovation economy from the courts which have left it a disaster. Let’s hope Congress rises to the need and acts before China and other nations surpass US technology.

Conclusion

It is most unfortunate that the Supreme Court continues to miss the mark on patent rights. Its failure to heed the clearly expressed statutory language on patent eligibility is badly out of synch with the respect for textualism that it has shown in handing down recent landmark decisions on the free exercise of religion, the right to bear arms, and limitations on the administrative state. Given the sad reality that the Court is unlikely to change its tune, Congress should act promptly to amend Section 101 and thereby reaffirm the clear and broad patent-eligibility standard that had stood our country in good stead from the mid-20th century to a decade ago. Such an outcome would strengthen the U.S. patent system, thereby promoting innovation and competition.

In Intellectual Property, Patent, Supreme Court, Truth on the Market competition, Congress, federal circuit, innovation, Intellectual property, Patents, Section 101, Supreme Court

Unpacking the Flawed 2021 Draft USPTO, NIST, & DOJ Policy Statement on Standard-Essential Patents (SEPs)

Geoffrey Manne — 8 February 2022

Responding to a new draft policy statement from the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division (DOJ) regarding remedies for infringement of standard-essential patents (SEPs), a group of 19 distinguished law, economics, and business scholars convened by the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) submitted comments arguing that the guidance would improperly tilt the balance of power between implementers and inventors, and could undermine incentives for innovation.

As explained in the scholars’ comments, the draft policy statement misunderstands many aspects of patent and antitrust policy. The draft notably underestimates the value of injunctions and the circumstances in which they are a necessary remedy. It also overlooks important features of the standardization process that make opportunistic behavior much less likely than policymakers typically recognize. These points are discussed in even more detail in previous work by ICLE scholars, including here and here.

These first-order considerations are only the tip of the iceberg, however. Patent policy has a huge range of second-order effects that the draft policy statement and policymakers more generally tend to overlook. Indeed, reducing patent protection has more detrimental effects on economic welfare than the conventional wisdom typically assumes.

The comments highlight three important areas affected by SEP policy that would be undermined by the draft statement.

First, SEPs are established through an industry-wide, collaborative process that develops and protects innovations considered essential to an industry’s core functioning. This process enables firms to specialize in various functions throughout an industry, rather than vertically integrate to ensure compatibility.
Second, strong patent protection, especially of SEPs, boosts startup creation via a broader set of mechanisms than is typically recognized.
Finally, strong SEP protection is essential to safeguard U.S. technology leadership and sovereignty.

As explained in the scholars’ comments, the draft policy statement would be detrimental on all three of these dimensions.

To be clear, the comments do not argue that addressing these secondary effects should be a central focus of patent and antitrust policy. Instead, the point is that policymakers must deal with a far more complex set of issues than is commonly recognized; the effects of SEP policy aren’t limited to the allocation of rents among inventors and implementers (as they are sometimes framed in policy debates). Accordingly, policymakers should proceed with caution and resist the temptation to alter by fiat terms that have emerged through careful negotiation among inventors and implementers, and which have been governed for centuries by the common law of contract.

Collaborative Standard-Setting and Specialization as Substitutes for Proprietary Standards and Vertical Integration

Intellectual property in general—and patents, more specifically—is often described as a means to increase the monetary returns from the creation and distribution of innovations. While this is undeniably the case, this framing overlooks the essential role that IP also plays in promoting specialization throughout the economy.

As Ronald Coase famously showed in his Nobel-winning work, firms must constantly decide whether to perform functions in-house (by vertically integrating), or contract them out to third parties (via the market mechanism). Coase concluded that these decisions hinge on whether the transaction costs associated with the market mechanism outweigh the cost of organizing production internally. Decades later, Oliver Williamson added a key finding to this insight. He found that among the most important transaction costs that firms encounter are those that stem from incomplete contracts and the scope for opportunistic behavior they entail.

This leads to a simple rule of thumb: as the scope for opportunistic behavior increases, firms are less likely to use the market mechanism and will instead perform tasks in-house, leading to increased vertical integration.

IP plays a key role in this process. Patents drastically reduce the transaction costs associated with the transfer of knowledge. This gives firms the opportunity to develop innovations collaboratively and without fear that trading partners might opportunistically appropriate their inventions. In turn, this leads to increased specialization. As Robert Merges observes:

Patents facilitate arms-length trade of a technology-intensive input, leading to entry and specialization.

More specifically, it is worth noting that the development and commercialization of inventions can lead to two important sources of opportunistic behavior: patent holdup and patent holdout. As the assembled scholars explain in their comments, while patent holdup has drawn the lion’s share of policymaker attention, empirical and anecdotal evidence suggest that holdout is the more salient problem.

Policies that reduce these costs—especially patent holdout—in a cost-effective manner are worthwhile, with the immediate result that technologies are more widely distributed than would otherwise be the case. Inventors also see more intense and extensive incentives to produce those technologies in the first place.

The Importance of Intellectual Property Rights for Startup Activity

Strong patent rights are essential to monetize innovation, thus enabling new firms to gain a foothold in the marketplace. As the scholars’ comments explain, this is even more true for startup companies. There are three main reasons for this:

Patent rights protected by injunctions prevent established companies from simply copying innovative startups, with the expectation that they will be able to afford court-set royalties;
Patent rights can be the basis for securitization, facilitating access to startup funding; and
Patent rights drive venture capital (VC) investment.

While point (1) is widely acknowledged, many fail to recognize it is particularly important for startup companies. There is abundant literature on firms’ appropriability mechanisms (these are essentially the strategies firms employ to prevent rivals from copying their inventions). The literature tells us that patent protection is far from the only strategy firms use to protect their inventions (see. e.g., here, here and here).

The alternative appropriability mechanisms identified by these studies tend to be easier to implement for well-established firms. For instance, many firms earn returns on their inventions by incorporating them into physical products that cannot be reverse engineered. This is much easier for firms that already have a large industry presence and advanced manufacturing capabilities. In contrast, startup companies—almost by definition—must outsource production.

Second, property rights could drive startup activity through the collateralization of IP. By offering security interests in patents, trademarks, and copyrights, startups with little or no tangible assets can obtain funding without surrendering significant equity. As Gaétan de Rassenfosse puts it:

SMEs can leverage their IP to facilitate R&D financing…. [P]atents materialize the value of knowledge stock: they codify the knowledge and make it tradable, such that they can be used as collaterals. Recent theoretical evidence by Amable et al. (2010) suggests that a systematic use of patents as collateral would allow a high growth rate of innovations despite financial constraints.

Finally, there is reason to believe intellectual-property protection is an important driver of venture capital activity. Beyond simply enabling firms to earn returns on their investments, patents might signal to potential investors that a company is successful and/or valuable. Empirical research by Hsu and Ziedonis, for instance, supports this hypothesis:

[W]e find a statistically significant and economically large effect of patent filings on investor estimates of start-up value…. A doubling in the patent application stock of a new venture [in] this sector is associated with a 28 percent increase in valuation, representing an upward funding-round adjustment of approximately $16.8 million for the average start-up in our sample.

In short, intellectual property can stimulate startup activity through various mechanisms. There is thus a sense that, at the margin, weakening patent protection will make it harder for entrepreneurs to embark on new business ventures.

The Role of Strong SEP Rights in Guarding Against China’s ‘Cyber Great Power’ Ambitions

The United States, due in large measure to its strong intellectual-property protections, is a nation of innovators, and its production of IP is one of its most important comparative advantages.

IP and its legal protections become even more important, however, when dealing with international jurisdictions, like China, that don’t offer similar levels of legal protection. By making it harder for patent holders to obtain injunctions, licensees and implementers gain the advantage in the short term, because they are able to use patented technology without having to engage in negotiations to pay the full market price.

In the case of many SEPs—particularly those in the telecommunications sector—a great many patent holders are U.S.-based, while the lion’s share of implementers are Chinese. The anti-injunction policy espoused in the draft policy statement thus amounts to a subsidy to Chinese infringers of U.S. technology.

At the same time, China routinely undermines U.S. intellectual property protections through its industrial policy. The government’s stated goal is to promote “fair and reasonable” international rules, but it is clear that China stretches its power over intellectual property around the world by granting “anti-suit injunctions” on behalf of Chinese smartphone makers, designed to curtail enforcement of foreign companies’ patent rights.

This is part of the Chinese government’s larger approach to industrial policy, which seeks to expand Chinese power in international trade negotiations and in global standards bodies. As one Chinese Communist Party official put it:

Standards are the commanding heights, the right to speak, and the right to control. Therefore, the one who obtains the standards gains the world.

Insufficient protections for intellectual property will hasten China’s objective of dominating collaborative standard development in the medium to long term. Simultaneously, this will engender a switch to greater reliance on proprietary, closed standards rather than collaborative, open standards. These harmful consequences are magnified in the context of the global technology landscape, and in light of China’s strategic effort to shape international technology standards. Chinese companies, directed by their government authorities, will gain significant control of the technologies that will underpin tomorrow’s digital goods and services.

The scholars convened by ICLE were not alone in voicing these fears. David Teece (also a signatory to the ICLE-convened comments), for example, surmises in his comments that:

The US government, in reviewing competition policy issues that might impact standards, therefore needs to be aware that the issues at hand have tremendous geopolitical consequences and cannot be looked at in isolation…. Success in this regard will promote competition and is our best chance to maintain technological leadership—and, along with it, long-term economic growth and consumer welfare and national security.

Similarly, comments from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (signed by, among others, former USPTO Director Anrei Iancu, former NIST Director Walter Copan, and former Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre) argue that the draft policy statement would benefit Chinese firms at U.S. firms’ expense:

What is more, the largest short-term and long-term beneficiaries of the 2021 Draft Policy Statement are firms based in China. Currently, China is the world’s largest consumer of SEP-based technology, so weakening protection of American owned patents directly benefits Chinese manufacturers. The unintended effect of the 2021 Draft Policy Statement will be to support Chinese efforts to dominate critical technology standards and other advanced technologies, such as 5G. Put simply, devaluing U.S. patents is akin to a subsidized tech transfer to China.

With Chinese authorities joining standardization bodies and increasingly claiming jurisdiction over F/RAND disputes, there should be careful reevaluation of the ways the draft policy statement would further weaken the United States’ comparative advantage in IP-dependent technological innovation.

Conclusion

In short, weakening patent protection could have detrimental ramifications that are routinely overlooked by policymakers. These include increasing inventors’ incentives to vertically integrate rather than develop innovations collaboratively; reducing startup activity (especially when combined with antitrust enforcers’ newfound proclivity to challenge startup acquisitions); and eroding America’s global technology leadership, particularly with respect to China.

For these reasons (and others), the text of the draft policy statement should be reconsidered and either revised substantially to better reflect these concerns or withdrawn entirely.

The signatories to the comments are:

Alden F. Abbott	Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center George Mason University Former General Counsel, U.S. Federal Trade Commission
Jonathan Barnett	Torrey H. Webb Professor of Law University of Southern California
Ronald A. Cass	Dean Emeritus, School of Law Boston University Former Commissioner and Vice-Chairman, U.S. International Trade Commission
Giuseppe Colangelo	Jean Monnet Chair in European Innovation Policy and Associate Professor of Competition Law & Economics University of Basilicata and LUISS (Italy)
Richard A. Epstein	Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law New York University
Bowman Heiden	Executive Director, Tusher Initiative at the Haas School of Business University of California, Berkeley
Justin (Gus) Hurwitz	Professor of Law University of Nebraska
Thomas A. Lambert	Wall Chair in Corporate Law and Governance University of Missouri
Stan J. Liebowitz	Ashbel Smith Professor of Economics University of Texas at Dallas
John E. Lopatka	A. Robert Noll Distinguished Professor of Law Penn State University
Keith Mallinson	Founder and Managing Partner WiseHarbor
Geoffrey A. Manne	President and Founder International Center for Law & Economics
Adam Mossoff	Professor of Law George Mason University
Kristen Osenga	Austin E. Owen Research Scholar and Professor of Law University of Richmond
Vernon L. Smith	George L. Argyros Endowed Chair in Finance and Economics Chapman University Nobel Laureate in Economics (2002)
Daniel F. Spulber	Elinor Hobbs Distinguished Professor of International Business Northwestern University
David J. Teece	Thomas W. Tusher Professor in Global Business University of California, Berkeley
Joshua D. Wright	University Professor of Law George Mason University Former Commissioner, U.S. Federal Trade Commission
John M. Yun	Associate Professor of Law George Mason University Former Acting Deputy Assistant Director, Bureau of Economics, U.S. Federal Trade Commission

More Evidence that the Patent System Promotes Dynamic Competition and Consumer Welfare

Alden Abbott — 7 September 2021

The patent system is too often caricatured as involving the grant of “monopolies” that may be used to delay entry and retard competition in key sectors of the economy. The accumulation of allegedly “poor-quality” patents into thickets and portfolios held by “patent trolls” is said by critics to spawn excessive royalty-licensing demands and threatened “holdups” of firms that produce innovative products and services. These alleged patent abuses have been characterized as a wasteful “tax” on high-tech implementers of patented technologies, which inefficiently raises price and harms consumer welfare.

Fortunately, solid scholarship has debunked these stories and instead pointed to the key role patents play in enhancing competition and driving innovation. See, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Nevertheless, early indications are that the Biden administration may be adopting a patent-skeptical attitude. Such an attitude was revealed, for example, in the president’s July 9 Executive Order on Competition (which suggested an openness to undermining the Bayh-Dole Act by using march-in rights to set prices; to weakening pharmaceutical patent rights; and to weakening standard essential patents) and in the administration’s inexplicable decision to waive patent protection for COVID-19 vaccines (see here and here).

Before it takes further steps that would undermine patent protections, the administration should consider new research that underscores how patents help to spawn dynamic market growth through “design around” competition and through licensing that promotes new technologies and product markets.

Patents Spawn Welfare-Enhancing ‘Design Around’ Competition

Critics sometimes bemoan the fact that patents covering a new product or technology allegedly retard competition by preventing new firms from entering a market. (Never mind the fact that the market might not have existed but for the patent.) This thinking, which confuses a patent with a product-market monopoly, is badly mistaken. It is belied by the fact that the publicly available patented technology itself (1) provides valuable information to third parties; and (2) thereby incentivizes them to innovate and compete by refining technologies that fall outside the scope of the patent. In short, patents on important new technologies stimulate, rather than retard, competition. They do this by leading third parties to “design around” the patented technology and thus generate competition that features a richer set of technological options realized in new products.

The importance of design around is revealed, for example, in the development of the incandescent light bulb market in the late 19^th century, in reaction to Edison’s patent on a long-lived light bulb. In a 2021 article in the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Ron D. Katznelson and John Howells did an empirical study of this important example of product innovation. The article’s synopsis explains:

Designing around patents is prevalent but not often appreciated as a means by which patents promote economic development through competition. We provide a novel empirical study of the extent and timing of designing around patent claims. We study the filing rate of incandescent lamp-related patents during 1878–1898 and find that the enforcement of Edison’s incandescent lamp patent in 1891–1894 stimulated a surge of patenting. We studied the specific design features of the lamps described in these lamp patents and compared them with Edison’s claimed invention to create a count of noninfringing designs by filing date. Most of these noninfringing designs circumvented Edison’s patent claims by creating substitute technologies to enable participation in the market. Our forward citation analysis of these patents shows that some had introduced pioneering prior art for new fields. This indicates that invention around patents is not duplicative research and contributes to dynamic economic efficiency. We show that the Edison lamp patent did not suppress advance in electric lighting and the market power of the Edison patent owner weakened during this patent’s enforcement. We propose that investigation of the effects of design around patents is essential for establishing the degree of market power conferred by patents.

In a recent commentary, Katznelson highlights the procompetitive consumer welfare benefits of the Edison light bulb design around:

GE’s enforcement of the Edison patent by injunctions did not stifle competition nor did it endow GE with undue market power, let alone a “monopoly.” Instead, it resulted in clear and tangible consumer welfare benefits. Investments in design-arounds resulted in tangible and measurable dynamic economic efficiencies by (a) increased competition, (b) lamp price reductions, (c) larger choice of suppliers, (d) acceleration of downstream development of new electric illumination technologies, and (e) collateral creation of new technologies that would not have been developed for some time but for the need to design around Edison’s patent claims. These are all imparted benefits attributable to patent enforcement.

Katznelson further explains that “the mythical harm to innovation inflicted by enforcers of pioneer patents is not unique to the Edison case.” He cites additional research debunking claims that the Wright brothers’ pioneer airplane patent seriously retarded progress in aviation (“[a]ircraft manufacturing and investments grew at an even faster pace after the assertion of the Wright Brothers’ patent than before”) and debunking similar claims made about the early radio industry and the early automobile industry. He also notes strong research refuting the patent holdup conjecture regarding standard essential patents. He concludes by bemoaning “infringers’ rhetoric” that “suppresses information on the positive aspects of patent enforcement, such as the design-around effects that we study in this article.”

The Bayh-Dole Act: Licensing that Promotes New Technologies and Product Markets

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 has played an enormously important role in accelerating American technological innovation by creating a property rights-based incentive to use government labs. As this good summary from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization puts it, it “[e]mpowers universities, small businesses and non-profit institutions to take ownership [through patent rights] of inventions made during federally-funded research, so they can license these basic inventions for further applied research and development and broader public use.”

The act has continued to generate many new welfare-enhancing technologies and related high-tech business opportunities even during the “COVID slowdown year” of 2020, according to a newly released survey by a nonprofit organization representing the technology management community (see here):

° The number of startup companies launched around academic inventions rose from 1,040 in 2019 to 1,117 in 2020. Almost 70% of these companies locate in the same state as the research institution that licensed them—making Bayh-Dole a critical driver of state and regional economic development;
° Invention disclosures went from 25,392 to 27,112 in 2020;
° New patent applications increased from 15,972 to 17,738;
° Licenses and options went from 9,751 in ’19 to 10,050 in ’20, with 60% of licenses going to small companies; and
° Most impressive of all—new products introduced to the market based on academic inventions jumped from 711 in 2019 to 933 in 2020.

Despite this continued record of success, the Biden Administration has taken actions that create uncertainty about the government’s support for Bayh-Dole.

As explained by the Congressional Research Service, “march-in rights allow the government, in specified circumstances, to require the contractor or successors in title to the patent to grant a ‘nonexclusive, partially exclusive, or exclusive license’ to a ‘responsible applicant or applicants.’ If the patent owner refuses to do so, the government may grant the license itself.” Government march-in rights thus far have not been invoked, but a serious threat of their routine invocation would greatly disincentivize future use of Bayh-Dole, thereby undermining patent-backed innovation.

Despite this, the president’s July 9 Executive Order on Competition (noted above) instructed the U.S. Commerce Department to defer finalizing a regulation (see here) “that would have ensured that march-in rights under Bayh Dole would not be misused to allow the government to set prices, but utilized for its statutory intent of providing oversight so good faith efforts are being made to turn government-funded innovations into products. But that’s all up in the air now.”

What’s more, a new U.S. Energy Department policy that would more closely scrutinize Bayh-Dole patentees’ licensing transactions and acquisitions (apparently to encourage more domestic manufacturing) has raised questions in the Bayh-Dole community and may discourage licensing transactions (see here and here). Added to this is the fact that “prominent Members of Congress are pressing the Biden Administration to misconstrue the march-in rights clause to control prices of products arising from National Institutes of Health and Department of Defense funding.” All told, therefore, the outlook for continued patent-inspired innovation through Bayh-Dole processes appears to be worse than it has been in many years.

Conclusion

The patent system does far more than provide potential rewards to enhance incentives for particular individuals to invent. The system also creates a means to enhance welfare by facilitating the diffusion of technology through market processes (see here).

But it does even more than that. It actually drives new forms of dynamic competition by inducing third parties to design around new patents, to the benefit of consumers and the overall economy. As revealed by the Bayh-Dole Act, it also has facilitated the more efficient use of federal labs to generate innovation and new products and processes that would not otherwise have seen the light of day. Let us hope that the Biden administration pays heed to these benefits to the American economy and thinks again before taking steps that would further weaken our patent system.

Platform Self-Preferencing Can Be Good for Consumers and Even Competitors

Sam Bowman & Geoffrey Manne — 4 March 2021

Critics of big tech companies like Google and Amazon are increasingly focused on the supposed evils of “self-preferencing.” This refers to when digital platforms like Amazon Marketplace or Google Search, which connect competing services with potential customers or users, also offer (and sometimes prioritize) their own in-house products and services.

The objection, raised by several members and witnesses during a Feb. 25 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, is that it is unfair to third parties that use those sites to allow the site’s owner special competitive advantages. Is it fair, for example, for Amazon to use the data it gathers from its service to design new products if third-party merchants can’t access the same data? This seemingly intuitive complaint was the basis for the European Commission’s landmark case against Google.

But we cannot assume that something is bad for competition just because it is bad for certain competitors. A lot of unambiguously procompetitive behavior, like cutting prices, also tends to make life difficult for competitors. The same is true when a digital platform provides a service that is better than alternatives provided by the site’s third-party sellers.

It’s probably true that Amazon’s access to customer search and purchase data can help it spot products it can undercut with its own versions, driving down prices. But that’s not unusual; most retailers do this, many to a much greater extent than Amazon. For example, you can buy AmazonBasics batteries for less than half the price of branded alternatives, and they’re pretty good.

There’s no doubt this is unpleasant for merchants that have to compete with these offerings. But it is also no different from having to compete with more efficient rivals who have lower costs or better insight into consumer demand. Copying products and seeking ways to offer them with better features or at a lower price, which critics of self-preferencing highlight as a particular concern, has always been a fundamental part of market competition—indeed, it is the primary way competition occurs in most markets.

Store-branded versions of iPhone cables and Nespresso pods are certainly inconvenient for those companies, but they offer consumers cheaper alternatives. Where such copying may be problematic (say, by deterring investments in product innovations), the law awards and enforces patents and copyrights to reward novel discoveries and creative works, and trademarks to protect brand identity. But in the absence of those cases where a company has intellectual property, this is simply how competition works.

The fundamental question is “what benefits consumers?” Services like Yelp object that they cannot compete with Google when Google embeds its Google Maps box in Google Search results, while Yelp cannot do the same. But for users, the Maps box adds valuable information to the results page, making it easier to get what they want. Google is not making Yelp worse by making its own product better. Should it have to refrain from offering services that benefit its users because doing so might make competing products comparatively less attractive?

Self-preferencing also enables platforms to promote their offerings in other markets, which is often how large tech companies compete with each other. Amazon has a photo-hosting app that competes with Google Photos and Apple’s iCloud. It recently emailed its customers to promote it. That is undoubtedly self-preferencing, since other services cannot market themselves to Amazon’s customers like this, but if it makes customers aware of an alternative they might not have otherwise considered, that is good for competition.

This kind of behavior also allows companies to invest in offering services inexpensively, or for free, that they intend to monetize by preferencing their other, more profitable products. For example, Google invests in Android’s operating system and gives much of it away for free precisely because it can encourage Android customers to use the profitable Google Search service. Despite claims to the contrary, it is difficult to see this sort of cross-subsidy as harmful to consumers.

Self-preferencing can even be good for competing services, including third-party merchants. In many cases, it expands the size of their potential customer base. For example, blockbuster video games released by Sony and Microsoft increase demand for games by other publishers because they increase the total number of people who buy Playstations and Xboxes. This effect is clear on Amazon’s Marketplace, which has grown enormously for third-party merchants even as Amazon has increased the number of its own store-brand products on the site. By making the Amazon Marketplace more attractive, third-party sellers also benefit.

All platforms are open or closed to varying degrees. Retail “platforms,” for example, exist on a spectrum on which Craigslist is more open and neutral than eBay, which is more so than Amazon, which is itself relatively more so than, say, Walmart.com. Each position on this spectrum offers its own benefits and trade-offs for consumers. Indeed, some customers’ biggest complaint against Amazon is that it is too open, filled with third parties who leave fake reviews, offer counterfeit products, or have shoddy returns policies. Part of the role of the site is to try to correct those problems by making better rules, excluding certain sellers, or just by offering similar options directly.

Regulators and legislators often act as if the more open and neutral, the better, but customers have repeatedly shown that they often prefer less open, less neutral options. And critics of self-preferencing frequently find themselves arguing against behavior that improves consumer outcomes, because it hurts competitors. But that is the nature of competition: what’s good for consumers is frequently bad for competitors. If we have to choose, it’s consumers who should always come first.

How Antitrust Regulators Could Use the ‘Perpetual Inventory Method’ to Value R&D

Rohan Shah — 22 February 2021

The slew of recent antitrust cases in the digital, tech, and pharmaceutical industries has brought significant attention to the investments many firms in these industries make in “intangibles,” such as software and research and development (R&D).

Intangibles are recognized to have an important effect on a company’s (and the economy’s) performance. For example, Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake (2017) highlight the increasingly large investments companies have been making in things like programming in-house software, organizational structures, and, yes, a firm’s stock of knowledge obtained through R&D. They also note the considerable difficulties associated with valuing both those investments and the outcomes (such as new operational procedures, a new piece of software, or a new patent) of those investments.

This difficulty in valuing intangibles has gone somewhat under the radar until relatively recently. There has been progress in valuing them at the aggregate level (see Ellen R. McGrattan and Edward C. Prescott (2008)) and in examining their effects at the level of individual sectors (see McGrattan (2020)). It remains difficult, however, to ascertain the value of the entire stock of intangibles held by an individual firm.

There is a method to estimate the value of one component of a firm’s stock of intangibles. Specifically, the “stock of knowledge obtained through research and development” is likely to form a large proportion of most firms’ intangibles. Treating R&D as a “stock” might not be the most common way to frame the subject, but it does have an intuitive appeal.

What a firm knows (i.e., its intellectual property) is an input to its production process, just like physical capital. The most direct way for firms to acquire knowledge is to conduct R&D, which adds to its “stock of knowledge,” as represented by its accumulated stock of R&D. In this way, a firm’s accumulated investment in R&D then becomes a stock of R&D that it can use in production of whatever goods and services it wants. Thankfully, there is a relatively straightforward (albeit imperfect) method to measure a firm’s stock of R&D that relies on information obtained from a company’s accounts, along with a few relatively benign assumptions.

This method (set out by Bronwyn Hall (1990, 1993)) uses a firm’s annual expenditures on R&D (a separate line item in most company accounts) in the “perpetual inventory” method to calculate a firm’s stock of R&D in any particular year. This perpetual inventory method is commonly used to estimate a firm’s stock of physical capital, so applying it to obtain an estimate of a firm’s stock of knowledge—i.e., their stock of R&D—should not be controversial.

All this method requires to obtain a firm’s stock of R&D for this year is knowledge of a firm’s R&D stock and its investment in R&D (i.e., its R&D expenditures) last year. This year’s R&D stock is then the sum of those R&D expenditures and its undepreciated R&D stock that is carried forward into this year.

As some R&D expenditure datasets include, for example, wages paid to scientists and research workers, this is not exactly the same as calculating a firm’s physical capital stock, which would only use a firm’s expenditures on physical capital. But given that paying people to perform R&D also adds to a firm’s stock of R&D through the increased knowledge and expertise of their employees, it seems reasonable to include this in a firm’s stock of R&D.

As mentioned previously, this method requires making certain assumptions. In particular, it is necessary to assume a rate of depreciation of the stock of R&D each period. Hall suggests a depreciation of 15% per year (compared to the roughly 7% per year for physical capital), and estimates presented by Hall, along with Wendy Li (2018), suggest that, in some industries, the figure can be as high as 50%, albeit with a wide range across industries.

The other assumption required for this method is an estimate of the firm’s initial level of stock. To see why such an assumption is necessary, suppose that you have data on a firm’s R&D expenditure running from 1990-2016. This means that you can calculate a firm’s stock of R&D for each year once you have their R&D stock in the previous year via the formula above.

When calculating the firm’s R&D stock for 2016, you need to know what their R&D stock was in 2015, while to calculate their R&D stock for 2015 you need to know their R&D stock in 2014, and so on backward until you reach the first year for which you have data: in this, case 1990.

However, working out the firm’s R&D stock in 1990 requires data on the firm’s R&D stock in 1989. The dataset does not contain any information about 1989, nor the firm’s actual stock of R&D in 1990. Hence, it is necessary to make an assumption regarding the firm’s stock of R&D in 1990.

There are several different assumptions one can make regarding this “starting value.” You could assume it is just a very small number. Or you can assume, as per Hall, that it is the firm’s R&D expenditure in 1990 divided by the sum of the R&D depreciation and average growth rates (the latter being taken as 8% per year by Hall). Note that, given the high depreciation rates for the stock of R&D, it turns out that the exact starting value does not matter significantly (particularly in years toward the end of the dataset) if you have a sufficiently long data series. At a 15% depreciation rate, more than 50% of the initial value disappears after five years.

Although there are other methods to measure a firm’s stock of R&D, these tend to provide less information or rely on stronger assumptions than the approach described above does. For example, sometimes a firm’s stock of R&D is measured using a simple count of the number of patents they hold. However, this approach does not take into account the “value” of a patent. Since, by definition, each patent is unique (with differing number of years to run, levels of quality, ability to be challenged or worked around, and so on), it is unlikely to be appropriate to use an “average value of patents sold recently” to value it. At least with the perpetual inventory method described above, a monetary value for a firm’s stock of R&D can be obtained.

The perpetual inventory method also provides a way to calculate market shares of R&D in R&D-intensive industries, which can be used alongside current measures. This would be akin to looking at capacity shares in some manufacturing industries. Of course, using market shares in R&D industries can be fraught with issues, such as whether it is appropriate to use a backward-looking measure to assess competitive constraints in a forward-looking industry. This is why any investigation into such industries should also look, for example, at a firm’s research pipeline.

Naturally, this only provides for the valuation of the R&D stock and says nothing about valuing other intangibles that are likely to play an important role in a much wider range of industries. Nonetheless, this method could provide another means for competition authorities to assess the current and historical state of R&D stocks in industries in which R&D plays an important part. It would be interesting to see what firms’ shares of R&D stocks look like, for example, in the pharmaceutical and tech industries.

In Antitrust & Competition, Health Care, Intellectual Property, Merger Guidelines, Mergers & Acquisitions, Monopolization, Patent, Pharmaceuticals, Truth on the Market antitrust, antitrust enforcement, Efficiencies, intangibles, Intellectual property, Patents, pharmaceutical industry, SSRN, technology

Coronavirus treatments and vaccines: Patents … or a Prize?

Tim Brennan — 16 April 2020

[TOTM: The following is part of a blog series by TOTM guests and authors on the law, economics, and policy of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The entire series of posts is available here.

This post is authored by Tim Brennan, (Professor, Economics & Public Policy, University of Maryland; former FCC; former FTC).]

Observers on TOTM and elsewhere have pointed out the importance of preserving patent rights as pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies pursue development of treatments for, and better vaccines against, Covid-19. As the benefits of these treatments could reach into the trillions of dollars (see here for a casual estimate and here for a more serious one), it is hard to imagine a level of reward for successful innovations that is too high.

On the other hand, as these and other commentaries suggest if only implicitly, the high social value of a coronavirus treatment or vaccine may well lead to calls to limit the ability to profit from a patent. It is easy to imagine that a developer of a vaccine will not be able to charge the patent-protected price (note avoidance of the term “monopoly”). It almost certainly will not be able to do so if it cannot use price discrimination in order to allow those lacking the means to pay a uniform higher price to get the vaccine.

However, there is an alternative to patents that have not received much attention in the policy discussion—having the government (Treasury, NIH, CDC) offer a prize in exchange for open access to a successful vaccine or treatment. Prizes are not new; they go back at least to the early 18^th century, when Britain offered a prize for improvements in clock accuracy to facilitate ocean-going navigation. Many prizes have been offered by the private sector, both for their own use—Netflix offering a prize for improvements to its movie recommendation algorithm—and to altruistically promote innovation. Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 first solo transatlantic flight, and previous attempts by others, were motivated at least in part by a $25,000 prize offered by a New York hotel owner.

In light of the net benefits of an improved vaccine, indicated perhaps by the level of spending in enacted and proposed stimulus and rescue programs, a prize of, oh, $25 billion is practically chump change. But would a prize make sense here?

I and two former colleagues at Resources for the Future, Molly Macauley and Kate Whitefoot, analyzed the use of prizes in comparison to patents and other methods to solicit and procure innovation. This work was inspired by Molly’s interest in NASA’s use of prizes to induce innovations in space exploration equipment. On the theory side, we were interested because models of patents typically treat patents as prizes—the successful innovator gets $X in expected profit—and thus were unable to explain why one might want to choose prizes rather than patents and vice versa.

When is a prize a “prize”?

The answer to this question requires being clear on what I mean by a prize. A familiar type of prize is the “best” of something, from first prize in the middle school science fair to the Academy Award for Best Picture. This is not the kind of prize I’m talking about with regard to coming up with a treatment for or vaccine against Covid-19. (George Mason’s Mercatus Center is offering prizes of this sort for things like $50,000 for “best coronavirus policy writing” to $500,000 for “best effort to find a treatment rapidly”; h/t to Geoff Manne.) Rather, it is a prize for being first to achieve a specific outcome, for example, a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

A necessary component of such prizes is a winning condition, specified in advance. For example, the $10 million Ansari X Prize to promote commercial space travel was not awarded just for some general demonstration of feasibility that pleased a set of judges. Rather, it specifically went to the first team that could “carry three people 100 kilometers above the earth’s surface twice within two weeks.” Contestants knew what they had to do, and there was no dispute when the winner met the criterion for getting the prize.

Prizes or patents?

The need for a winning condition highlights one of the two main criteria affecting the choice of patents or prizes: advance knowledge of the specific goal. Economy-wide, the advantage of patents over prizes is that entrepreneurial innovators are rewarded for coming up with sufficiently novel products or processes of value. Knowledge regarding what is worth innovative effort is decentralized and often tacit. On the other hand, if a funder, including the government, knows what it wants sufficiently well that it can specify a winning condition, a prize can be sensible as a way to focus innovative effort toward that desired objective.

The second criterion for choosing between patents and prizes is more subtle. Someone undertaking research effort to come up with a patent bears two risks. The first is the risk that the effort will not be successful, not just overall but in being the first to be able to file for a patent. That risk is essentially shared by those pursuing a prize, where being first involves not filing for a patent but meeting the winning condition. However, patent seekers bear another risk, which is how much the patent will be worth if they win it. Prize seekers do not bear that risk, as the prize is specified in advance. (Economic models of patent activity tend to ignore this variation.) Thus, a prize may induce more risk-averse innovators to compete for the prize.

Assuming a winning condition for a Covid-19 treatment or vaccine can be specified in advance—I leave that to the medical people—our present public health dilemma could be well suited for a prize. As observed earlier, with both net benefits and already made public spending responses in the trillions of dollars, such a prize could and should be quite large. That may be a difficult to sell politically but, as also observed earlier, the government may not be able to commit credibly to allow a patent winner to exploit the treatment or vaccine’s economic value.

Design issues, TBD

If prizes become an appealing way to encourage Covid-19 mitigation innovations, a few design issues remain on the table.

One is whether to have intermediate prizes, with their own winning conditions, to narrow down the field of contestants to those with more promising approaches. One would need some sort of winning condition for this, of course. A second is whether the innovation will be achieved more quickly by allowing contestants to combine efforts. The virtues of competition may be outweighed by being able to hedge bets rather than risk being stuck going down a blind alley.

A third is whether to go with winner-take-all or have second or third prizes. One advantage of multiple prizes is that it can mitigate some risk to innovators, at a potential cost of reducing the effort to win. However, one could imagine here that someone other than the winner might come up with a treatment or vaccine that does better than the winner but was found after the winner met the condition. This leads to a fourth policy choice—should contestants, the winner or others, retain patents, even if the winning treatment of vaccine is freely licensed, to be made available at marginal cost.

All of these choices, along with the choice of whether to offer a prize and what that prize should be, are matters of medical and pharmaceutical judgment. But economics does highlight the potential advantages of a prize and suggest that it may deserve some attention as other policy judgments are being made.

IP Rights Are Important, Even in Pandemics

Kristian Stout — 4 April 2020

[TOTM: The following is part of a blog series by TOTM guests and authors on the law, economics, and policy of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The entire series of posts is available here.

This post is authored by Kristian Stout, (Associate Director, International Center for Law & Economics]

The ongoing pandemic has been an opportunity to explore different aspects of the human condition. For myself, I have learned that, despite a deep commitment to philosophical (neo- or classical-) liberalism, at heart I am pragmatic. I would prefer a society that optimizes for more individual liberty, but I am emphatically not someone who would even entertain the idea of using crises to advance my agenda when it is not clearly in service to amelioration of immediate problems.

Sadly, I have also learned that there are those who are not similarly pragmatic, and are willing to advance their ideological agenda come hell or high water. In this regard, I was disappointed yesterday to see the Gurry IP/COVID Letter passing around Twitter calling for widespread, worldwide interference with the property rights of IPR holders.

The letter calls for a scattershot set of “remedies” to the crisis that would open access to copyright- and patent-protected inventions and content, including (among other things):

voluntary licensing and non-enforcement of IP;
abrogation of IPR by WIPO members using the “flexibility” in the international IP regime;
the removal of geographical restrictions on IP licenses;
forcing patents into COVID-19 patent pools; and
the implementation of compulsory licensing.

And, unlike many prior efforts to push the envelope on weakening IP protections, the Gurry Letter also calls for measures that would weaken trade secrets and expose confidential business information in order to “achieve universal and equitable access to COVID-19 medicines and medical technologies as soon as reasonably possible.”

Notably, nothing in the letter suggests that any of these measures should be regarded as temporary.

We all want treatments for infection, vaccines for prevention, and ample supply of personal protective equipment as soon as possible, but if all the demands in this letter were met, it would do little to increase the supply of any of these things in the short term, while undermining incentives to develop new treatments, vaccines and better preventative tools in the long run.

Fundamentally, the letter reflects a willingness to use the COVID-19 pandemic to pursue an agenda that lacks merit and would be dismissed in the normal course of affairs.

What is most certainly the case is that we need more innovation now, and we need it faster. There is no reason to believe that mandating open source status or forcing compulsory licensing on the firms doing that work will encourage that work to proceed with all due haste—and every indication that the opposite is the case.

Where there are short term shortages of certain products that might be produced in much larger quantities by relaxing IP, companies are responding by doing just that—voluntarily. But this is fundamentally different from the imposition of unlimited compulsory licenses.

Further, private actors have displayed an impressive willingness to provide free or low cost access to technologies and content—without government coercion. The following is a short list of some of the content and inventions that have been opened up:

Culture, Fitness & Entertainment

“HBO Will Stream 500 Hours of Free Programming, Including Full Seasons of ‘Veep,’ ‘The Sopranos,’ ‘Silicon Valley’”
Dozens (or more) of artists, both famous and lesser known, are releasing free back catalog performances or are taking part in free live streaming sessions on social media platforms. Notably, viewers are often welcome to donate or “pay what they” want to help support these artists (more on this below).
The NBA, NFL, and NHL are offering free access to their back catalogue of games.
A large array of music production software can now be used free on extended trials for 3 months (or completely free and unlimited in some cases).
CBS All Access expanded its free trial period.
Neil Gaiman and Harper Collins granted permission to Levar Burton to livestream readings from their catalogs.
Disney is releasing movies early onto its (paid) Disney+ services.
Gold’s Gym is providing free access to its app-based workouts.
The Met is streaming free recordings of its Live in HD series.
The Seattle Symphony is offering free access to some of its recorded performances.
The UK National Theater is streaming some of its most popular plays for free.
Andrew Lloyd Weber is streaming his shows online for free.

Science, News & Education

Scholastica released free content intended to help educate students stuck at home while sheltering-in-place.
Nearly 100 academic journals, societies, institutes, and companies signed a commitment to make research and data on COVID-19 freely available, at least for the duration of the outbreak.
The Atlantic lifted paywall restrictions on access to its COVID-19-related content.
The New England Journal of Medicine is allowing free access to COVID-19-related resources.
The Lancet allows free access to research it publishes on COVID-19.
All material published by theBMJ on the coronavirus outbreak is freely available.
The AAAS-published Science allows free access to its coronavirus research and commentary.
Elsevier gave full access to its content on its COVID-19 Information Center for PubMed Central and other public health databases.
The American Economic Association announced open access to all of its journals until the end of June.
JSTOR expanded free access to some of its scholarship.

Medicine & Technology

The Global Center for Medical Design is developing license-free PPE designs that can be quickly implemented by manufacturers.
Medtronic published “design specifications for the Puritan Bennett 560 (PB560) to allow innovators, inventors, start-ups, and academic institutions to leverage their own expertise and resources to evaluate options for rapid ventilator manufacturing.” It additionally provided software licenses for this technology.
AbbVie announced it won’t enforce its patent rights for Kaletra—a drug that may provide treatment for COVID-19 infections. Israel had earlier indicated it would impose compulsory licenses for the drug, but AbbVie is allowing use worldwide. The company, moreover, had donated supplies of the drug to China earlier in the year when the outbreak first became apparent.
Google is working with health researchers to provide anonymized and aggregated user location data.
“Cisco has extended free licenses and expanded usage counts at no extra charge for three of its security technologies to help strained IT teams and partners ready themselves and their clients for remote work.”
Microsoft is offering free subscriptions to its Teams product for six months.
Zoom expanded its free access and other limitations for educational institutions around the world.

Incentivize innovation, now more than ever

In addition to undermining the short-term incentives to draw more research resources into the fight against COVID-19, using this crisis to weaken the IP regime will cause long-term damage to the economies of the world. We still will need creators making new cultural products and researchers developing new medicines and technologies; weakening the IP regime will undermine the delicate set of incentives that cultural and scientific production depends upon.

Any clear-eyed assessment of the broader course of the pandemic and the response to it gives lie to the notion that IP rights are oppressive or counterproductive. It is the pharmaceutical industry—hated as they may be in some quarters—that will be able to marshall the resources and expertise to develop treatments and vaccines. And it is artists and educators producing cultural content who (theoretically) depend on the licensing revenues of their creations for survival.

In fact, one of the things that the pandemic has exposed is the fragility of artists’ livelihoods and the callousness with which they are often treated. Shortly after the lockdowns began in the US, the well-established rock musician David Crosby said in an interview that, if he could not tour this year, he would face tremendous financial hardship.

As unfortunate as that may be for Crosby, a world-famous musician, imagine how much harder it is for struggling musicians who can hardly hope to achieve a fraction of Crosby’s success for their own tours, let alone for licensing. If David Crosby cannot manage well for a few months on the revenue from his popular catalog, what hope do small artists have?

Indeed, the flood of unable-to-tour artists who are currently offering “donate what you can” streaming performances are a symptom of the destructive assault on IPR exemplified in the letter. For decades, these artists have been told that they can only legitimately make money through touring. Although the potential to actually make a living while touring is possibly out of reach for many or most artists, those that had been scraping by have now been brought to the brink of ruin as the ability to tour is taken away.

There are certainly ways the various IP regimes can be improved (like, for instance, figuring out how to help creators make a living from their creations), but now is not the time to implement wishlist changes to an otherwise broadly successful rights regime.

And, critically, there is a massive difference between achieving wider distribution of intellectual property voluntarily as opposed to through government fiat. When done voluntarily the IP owner determines the contours and extent of “open sourcing” so she can tailor increased access to her own needs (including the need to eat and pay rent). In some cases this may mean providing unlimited, completely free access, but in other cases—where the particular inventor or creator has a different set of needs and priorities—it may be something less than completely open access. When a rightsholder opts to “open source” her property voluntarily, she still retains the right to govern future use (i.e. once the pandemic is over) and is able to plan for reductions in revenue and how to manage future return on investment.

Our lawmakers can consider if a particular situation arises where a particular piece of property is required for the public good, should the need arise. Otherwise, as responsible individuals, we should restrain ourselves from trying to capitalize on the current crisis to ram through our policy preferences.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good on Copyright Office reform

Kristian Stout — 7 June 2017

R Street’s Sasha Moss recently posted a piece on TechDirt describing the alleged shortcomings of the Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act of 2017 (RCSAA) — proposed legislative adjustments to the Copyright Office, recently passed in the House and introduced in the Senate last month (with identical language).

Many of the article’s points are well taken. Nevertheless, they don’t support the article’s call for the Senate to “jettison [the bill] entirely,” nor the assertion that “[a]s currently written, the bill serves no purpose, and Congress shouldn’t waste its time on it.”

R Street’s main complaint with the legislation is that it doesn’t include other proposals in a House Judiciary Committee whitepaper on Copyright Office modernization. But condemning the RCSAA simply for failing to incorporate all conceivable Copyright Office improvements fails to adequately take account of the political realities confronting Congress — in other words, it lets the perfect be the enemy of the good. It also undermines R Street’s own stated preference for Copyright Office modernization effected through “targeted and immediately implementable solutions.”

Everyone — even R Street — acknowledges that we need to modernize the Copyright office. But none of the arguments in favor of a theoretical, “better” bill is undermined or impeded by passing this bill first. While there is certainly more that Congress can do on this front, the RCSAA is a sensible, targeted piece of legislation that begins to build the new foundation for a twenty-first century Copyright Office.

Process over politics

The proposed bill is simple: It would make the Register of Copyrights a nominated and confirmed position. For reasons almost forgotten over the last century and a half, the head of the Copyright Office is currently selected at the sole discretion of the Librarian of Congress. The Copyright Office was placed in the Library merely as a way to grow the Library’s collection with copies of copyrighted works.

More than 100 years later, most everyone acknowledges that the Copyright Office has lagged behind the times. And many think the problem lies with the Office’s placement within the Library, which is plagued with information technology and other problems, and has a distinctly different mission than the Copyright Office. The only real question is what to do about it.

Separating the the Copyright Office from the Library is a straightforward and seemingly apolitical step toward modernization. And yet, somewhat inexplicably, R Street claims that the bill

amounts largely to a partisan battle over who will have the power to select the next Register: [Current Librarian of Congress] Hayden, who was appointed by Barack Obama, or President Donald Trump.

But this is a pretty farfetched characterization.

First, the House passed the bill 378-48, with 145 Democrats joining 233 Republicans in support. That’s more than three-quarters of the Democratic caucus.

Moreover, legislation to make the Register a nominated and confirmed position has been under discussion for more than four years — long before either Dr. Hayden was nominated or anyone knew that Donald Trump (or any Republican at all, for that matter) would be president.

R Street also claims that the legislation

will make the register and the Copyright Office more politicized and vulnerable to capture by special interests, [and that] the nomination process could delay modernization efforts [because of Trump’s] confirmation backlog.

But precisely the opposite seems far more likely — as Sasha herself has previously recognized:

Clarifying the office’s lines of authority does have the benefit of making it more politically accountable…. The [House] bill takes a positive step forward in promoting accountability.

As far as I’m aware, no one claims that Dr. Hayden was “politicized” or that Librarians are vulnerable to capture because they are nominated and confirmed. And a Senate confirmation process will be more transparent than unilateral appointment by the Librarian, and will give the electorate a (nominal) voice in the Register’s selection. Surely unilateral selection of the Register by the Librarian is more susceptible to undue influence.

With respect to the modernization process, we should also not forget that the Copyright Office currently has an Acting Register in Karyn Temple Claggett, who is perfectly capable of moving the modernization process forward. And any limits on her ability to do so would arise from the very tenuousness of her position that the RCSAA is intended to address.

Modernizing the Copyright Office one piece at a time

It’s certainly true, as the article notes, that the legislation doesn’t include a number of other sensible proposals for Copyright Office modernization. In particular, it points to ideas like forming a stakeholder advisory board, creating new chief economist and technologist positions, upgrading the Office’s information technology systems, and creating a small claims court.

To be sure, these could be beneficial reforms, as ICLE (and many others) have noted. But I would take some advice from R Street’s own “pragmatic approach” to promoting efficient government “with the full realization that progress on the ground tends to be made one inch at a time.”

R Street acknowledges that the legislation’s authors have indicated that this is but a beginning step and that they plan to tackle the other issues in due course. At a time when passage of any legislation on any topic is a challenge, it seems appropriate to defer to those in Congress who affirmatively want more modernization about how big a bill to start with.

In any event, it seems perfectly sensible to address the Register selection process before tackling the other issues, which may require more detailed discussions of policy and cost. And with the Copyright Office currently lacking a permanent Register and discussions underway about finding a new one, addressing any changes Congress deems necessary in the selection process seems like the most pressing issue, if they are to be resolved prior to the next pick being made.

Further, because the Register would presumably be deeply involved in the selection and operation of any new advisory board, chief economist and technologist, IT system, or small claims process, Congress can also be forgiven for wanting to address the Register issue first. Moreover, a Register who can be summarily dismissed by the Librarian likely doesn’t have the needed autonomy to fully and effectively implement the other proposals from the whitepaper. Why build a house on a shaky foundation when you can fix the foundation first?

Process over substance

All of which leaves the question why R Street opposes a bill that was passed by a bipartisan supermajority in the House; that effects precisely the kind of targeted, incremental reform that R Street promotes; and that implements a specific reform that R Street favors.

The legislation has widespread support beyond Congress, although the TechDirt piece gives this support short shrift. Instead, it notes that “some” in the content industry support the legislation, but lists only the Motion Picture Association of America. There is a subtle undercurrent of the typical substantive copyright debate, in which “enlightened” thinking on copyright is set against the presumptively malicious overreach of the movie studios. But the piece neglects to mention the support of more than 70 large and small content creators, technology companies, labor unions, and free market and civil rights groups, among others.

Sensible process reforms should be implementable without the rancor that plagues most substantive copyright debates. But it’s difficult to escape. Copyright minimalists are skeptical of an effectual Copyright Office if it is more likely to promote policies that reinforce robust copyright, even if they support sensible process reforms and more-accountable government in the abstract. And, to be fair, copyright proponents are thrilled when their substantive positions might be bolstered by promotion of sensible process reforms.

But the truth is that no one really knows how an independent and accountable Copyright Office will act with respect to contentious, substantive issues. Perhaps most likely, increased accountability via nomination and confirmation will introduce more variance in its positions. In other words, on substance, the best guess is that greater Copyright Office accountability and modernization will be a wash — leaving only process itself as a sensible basis on which to assess reform. And on that basis, there is really no reason to oppose this widely supported, incremental step toward a modern US Copyright Office.

In Copyright, Intellectual Property copyright, Copyright Office, Intellectual property, Intellectual Property Rights

The DOJ-FTC IP Guidelines: Suggestions for Promoting Innovation

Kristian Stout — 28 September 2016

This week, the International Center for Law & Economics filed comments on the proposed revision to the joint U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) – U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust-IP Licensing Guidelines. Overall, the guidelines present a commendable framework for the IP-Antitrust intersection, in particular as they broadly recognize the value of IP and licensing in spurring both innovation and commercialization.

Although our assessment of the proposed guidelines is generally positive, we do go on to offer some constructive criticism. In particular, we believe, first, that the proposed guidelines should more strongly recognize that a refusal to license does not deserve special scrutiny; and, second, that traditional antitrust analysis is largely inappropriate for the examination of innovation or R&D markets.

On refusals to license,

Many of the product innovation cases that have come before the courts rely upon what amounts to an implicit essential facilities argument. The theories that drive such cases, although not explicitly relying upon the essential facilities doctrine, encourage claims based on variants of arguments about interoperability and access to intellectual property (or products protected by intellectual property). But, the problem with such arguments is that they assume, incorrectly, that there is no opportunity for meaningful competition with a strong incumbent in the face of innovation, or that the absence of competitors in these markets indicates inefficiency … Thanks to the very elements of IP that help them to obtain market dominance, firms in New Economy technology markets are also vulnerable to smaller, more nimble new entrants that can quickly enter and supplant incumbents by leveraging their own technological innovation.

Further, since a right to exclude is a fundamental component of IP rights, a refusal to license IP should continue to be generally considered as outside the scope of antitrust inquiries.

And, with respect to conducting antitrust analysis of R&D or innovation “markets,” we note first that “it is the effects on consumer welfare against which antitrust analysis and remedies are measured” before going on to note that the nature of R&D makes it effects very difficult to measure on consumer welfare. Thus, we recommend that the the agencies continue to focus on actual goods and services markets:

[C]ompetition among research and development departments is not necessarily a reliable driver of innovation … R&D “markets” are inevitably driven by a desire to innovate with no way of knowing exactly what form or route such an effort will take. R&D is an inherently speculative endeavor, and standard antitrust analysis applied to R&D will be inherently flawed because “[a] challenge for any standard applied to innovation is that antitrust analysis is likely to occur after the innovation, but ex post outcomes reveal little about whether the innovation was a good decision ex ante, when the decision was made.”

In Antitrust & Competition, Federal Trade Commission, Intellectual Property, International Center for Law & Economics, Justice Department, Truth on the Market commercialization, essential facilities, Intellectual property, Patent

Global Antitrust Institute’s Comments on Draft DOJ-FTC IP Guidelines are on the Mark

Alden Abbott — 20 September 2016

The Global Antitrust Institute (GAI) at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School released today a set of comments on the joint U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) – Federal Trade Commission (FTC) August 12 Proposed Update to their 1995 Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property (Proposed Update). As has been the case with previous GAI filings (see here, for example), today’s GAI Comments are thoughtful and on the mark.

For those of you who are pressed for time, the latest GAI comments make these major recommendations (summary in italics):

Standard Essential Patents (SEPs): The GAI Comments commended the DOJ and the FTC for preserving the principle that the antitrust framework is sufficient to address potential competition issues involving all IPRs—including both SEPs and non-SEPs. In doing so, the DOJ and the FTC correctly rejected the invitation to adopt a special brand of antitrust analysis for SEPs in which effects-based analysis was replaced with unique presumptions and burdens of proof.

o The GAI Comments noted that, as FTC Chairman Edith Ramirez has explained, “the same key enforcement principles [found in the 1995 IP Guidelines] also guide our analysis when standard essential patents are involved.”

o This is true because SEP holders, like other IP holders, do not necessarily possess market power in the antitrust sense, and conduct by SEP holders, including breach of a voluntary assurance to license its SEP on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms, does not necessarily result in harm to the competitive process or to consumers.

o Again, as Chairwoman Ramirez has stated, “it is important to recognize that a contractual dispute over royalty terms, whether the rate or the base used, does not in itself raise antitrust concerns.”

Refusals to License: The GAI Comments expressed concern that the statements regarding refusals to license in Sections 2.1 and 3 of the Proposed Update seem to depart from the general enforcement approach set forth in the 2007 DOJ-FTC IP Report in which those two agencies stated that “[a]ntitrust liability for mere unilateral, unconditional refusals to license patents will not play a meaningful part in the interface between patent rights and antitrust protections.” The GAI recommended that the DOJ and the FTC incorporate this approach into the final version of their updated IP Guidelines.

“Unreasonable Conduct”: The GAI Comments recommended that Section 2.2 of the Proposed Update be revised to replace the phrase “unreasonable conduct” with a clear statement that the agencies will only condemn licensing restraints when anticompetitive effects outweigh procompetitive benefits.

R&D Markets: The GAI Comments urged the DOJ and the FTC to reconsider the inclusion (or, at the very least, substantially limit the use) of research and development (R&D) markets because: (1) the process of innovation is often highly speculative and decentralized, making it impossible to identify all market participants to be; (2) the optimal relationship between R&D and innovation is unknown; (3) the market structure most conducive to innovation is unknown; (4) the capacity to innovate is hard to monopolize given that the components of modern R&D—research scientists, engineers, software developers, laboratories, computer centers, etc.—are continuously available on the market; and (5) anticompetitive conduct can be challenged under the actual potential competition theory or at a later time.

While the GAI Comments are entirely on point, even if their recommendations are all adopted, much more needs to be done. The Proposed Update, while relatively sound, should be viewed in the larger context of the Obama Administration’s unfortunate use of antitrust policy to weaken patent rights (see my article here, for example). In addition to strengthening the revised Guidelines, as suggested by the GAI, the DOJ and the FTC should work with other component agencies of the next Administration – including the Patent Office and the White House – to signal enhanced respect for IP rights in general. In short, a general turnaround in IP policy is called for, in order to spur American innovation, which has been all too lacking in recent years.

In Antitrust & Competition, Constitutional Law, Federal Trade Commission, Intellectual Property, Justice Department, Patent, Supreme Court antitrust, Antonin Scalia, doj, ftc, Intellectual property

The Latest Front in the Patent Wars: Attacking Innovation in Universities

Kristian Stout — 1 September 2016

It’s not quite so simple to spur innovation. Just ask the EU as it resorts to levying punitive retroactive taxes on productive American companies in order to ostensibly level the playing field (among other things) for struggling European startups. Thus it’s truly confusing when groups go on a wholesale offensive against patent rights — one of the cornerstones of American law that has contributed a great deal toward our unparalleled success as an innovative economy.

Take EFF, for instance. The advocacy organization has recently been peddling sample state legislation it calls the “Reclaim Invention Act,” which it claims is targeted at reining in so-called “patent trolls.” Leaving aside potential ulterior motives (like making it impossible to get software patents at all), I am left wondering what EFF actually hopes to achieve.

“Troll” is a scary sounding word, but what exactly is wrapped up in EFF’s definition? According to EFF’s proposed legislation, a “patent assertion entity” (the polite term for “patent troll”) is any entity that primarily derives its income through the licensing of patents – as opposed to actually producing the invention for public consumption. But this is just wrong. As Zorina Khan has noted, the basic premise upon which patent law was constructed in the U.S. was never predicated upon whether an invention would actually be produced:

The primary concern was access to the new information, and the ability of other inventors to benefit from the discovery either through licensing, inventing around the idea, or at expiration of the patent grant. The emphasis was certainly not on the production of goods; in fact, anyone who had previously commercialized an invention lost the right of exclusion vested in patents. The decision about how or whether the patent should be exploited remained completely within the discretion of the patentee, in the same way that the owner of physical property is allowed to determine its use or nonuse.

Patents are property. As with other forms of property, patent holders are free to transfer them to whomever they wish, and are free to license them as they see fit. The mere act of exercising property rights simply cannot be the basis for punitive treatment by the state. And, like it or not, licensing inventions or selling the property rights to an invention is very often how inventors are compensated for their work. Whether one likes the Patent Act in particular or not is irrelevant; as long as we have patents, these are fundamental economic and legal facts.

Further, the view implicit in EFF’s legislative proposal completely ignores the fact that the people or companies that may excel at inventing things (the province of scientists, for example) may not be so skilled at commercializing things (the province of entrepreneurs). Moreover, inventions can be enormously expensive to commercialize. In such cases, it could very well be the most economically efficient result to allow some third party with the requisite expertise or the means to build it, to purchase and manage the rights to the patent, and to allow them to arrange for production of the invention through licensing agreements. Intermediaries are nothing new in society, and, despite popular epithets about “middlemen,” they actually provide a necessary function with respect to mobilizing capital and enabling production.

Granted, some companies will exhibit actual “troll” behavior, but the question is not whether some actors are bad, but whether the whole system overall optimizes innovation and otherwise contributes to greater social welfare. Licensing patents in itself is a benign practice, so long as the companies that manage the patents are not abusive. And, of course, among the entities that engage in patent licensing, one would assume that universities would be the most unobjectionable of all parties.

Thus, it’s extremely disappointing that EFF would choose to single out universities as aiders and abettors of “trolls” — and in so doing recommend punitive treatment. And what EFF recommends is shockingly draconian. It doesn’t suggest that there should be heightened review in IPR proceedings, or that there should be fee shifting or other case-by-case sanctions doled out for unwise partnership decisions. No, according to the model legislation, universities would be outright cut off from government financial aid or other state funding, and any technology transfers would be void, unless they:

determine whether a patent is the most effective way to bring a new invention to a broad user base before filing for a patent that covers that invention[;] … prioritize technology transfer that develops its inventions and scales their potential user base[;] … endeavor to nurture startups that will create new jobs, products, and services[;] … endeavor to assign and license patents only to entities that require such licenses for active commercialization efforts or further research and development[;] … foster agreements and relationships that include the sharing of know-how and practical experience to maximize the value of the assignment or license of the corresponding patents; and … prioritize the public interest in all patent transactions.

Never mind the fact that recent cases like Alice Corp., Octane Fitness, and Highmark — as well as the new inter partes review process — seem to be putting effective downward pressure on frivolous suits (as well as, potentially, non-frivolous suits, for that matter); apparently EFF thinks that putting the screws to universities is what’s needed to finally overcome the (disputed) problems of excessive patent litigation.

Perhaps reflecting that even EFF itself knows that its model legislation is more of a publicity stunt than a serious proposal, most of what it recommends is either so ill-defined as to be useless (e.g., “prioritize public interest in all patent transactions?” What does that even mean?) or is completely mixed up.

For instance, the entire point of a university technology transfer office is that educational institutions and university researchers are not themselves in a position to adequately commercialize inventions. Questions of how large a user base a given invention can reach, or how best to scale products, grow markets, or create jobs are best left to entrepreneurs and business people. The very reason a technology transfer office would license or sell its patents to a third party is to discover these efficiencies.

And if a university engages in a transfer that, upon closer scrutiny, runs afoul of this rather fuzzy bit of legislation, any such transfers will be deemed void. Which means that universities will either have to expend enormous resources to find willing partners, or will spend millions on lawsuits and contract restitution damages. Enacting these feel-good mandates into state law is at best useless, and most likely a tool for crusading plaintiff’s attorneys to use to harass universities.

Universities: Don’t you dare commercialize that invention!

As I noted above, it’s really surprising that groups like EFF are going after universities, as their educational mission and general devotion to improving social welfare should make them the darlings of social justice crusaders. However, as public institutions with budgets and tax statuses dependent on political will, universities are both unable to route around organizational challenges (like losing student aid or preferred tax status) and are probably unwilling to engage in wholesale PR defensive warfare for fear of offending a necessary political constituency. Thus, universities are very juicy targets — particularly when they engage in “dirty” commercial activities of any sort, no matter how attenuated.

And lest you think that universities wouldn’t actually be harassed (other than in the abstract by the likes of EFF) over patents, it turns out that it’s happening even now, even without EFF’s proposed law.

For the last five years Princeton University has been locked in a lawsuit with some residents of Princeton, New Jersey who have embarked upon a transparently self-interested play to divert university funds to their own pockets. Their weapon of choice? A challenge to Princeton’s tax-exempt status based on the fact that the school licenses and sells its patented inventions.

The plaintiffs’ core argument in Fields v. Princeton is that the University should be a taxpaying entity because it occasionally generates patent licensing revenues from a small fraction of the research that its faculty conducts in University buildings.

The Princeton case is problematic for a variety of reasons, one of which deserves special attention because it runs squarely up against a laudable federal law that is intended to promote research, development, and patent commercialization.

In the early 1980s Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act, which made it possible for universities to retain ownership over discoveries made in campus labs. The aim of the law was to encourage essential basic research that had historically been underdeveloped. Previously, the rights to any such federally-funded discoveries automatically became the property of the federal government, which, not surprisingly, put a damper on universities’ incentives to innovate.

When universities collaborate with industry — a major aim of Bayh-Dole — innovation is encouraged, breakthroughs occur, and society as a whole is better off. About a quarter of the top drugs approved since 1981 came from university research, as did many life-changing products we now take for granted, like Google, web browsers, email, cochlear implants and major components of cell phones. Since the passage of the Act, a boom in commercialized patents has yielded billions of dollars of economic activity.

Under the Act innovators are also rewarded: Qualifying institutions like Princeton are required to share royalties with the researchers who make these crucial discoveries. The University has no choice in the matter; to refuse to share the revenues would constitute a violation of the terms of federal research funding. But the Fields suit ignores this reality an,d in much the same way as EFF’s proposed legislation, will force a stark choice upon Princeton University: engage with industry, increase social utility and face lawsuits, or keep your head down and your inventions to yourself.

A Hobson’s Choice

Thus, things like the Fields suit and EFF’s proposed legislation are worse than costly distractions for universities; they are major disincentives to the commercialization of university inventions. This may not be the intended consequence of these actions, but it is an entirely predictable one.

Faced with legislation that punishes them for being insufficiently entrepreneurial and suits that attack them for bothering to commercialize at all, universities will have to make a hobson’s choice: commercialize the small fraction of research that might yield licensing revenues and potentially face massive legal liability, or simply decide to forego commercialization (and much basic research) altogether.

The risk here, obviously, is that research institutions will choose the latter in order to guard against the significant organizational costs that could result from a change in their tax status or a thicket of lawsuits that emerge from voided technology transfers (let alone the risk of losing student aid money).

But this is not what we want as a society. We want the optimal level of invention, innovation, and commercialization. What anti-patent extremists and short-sighted state governments may obtain for us instead, however, is a status quo much like Europe where the legal and regulatory systems perpetually keep innovation on a low simmer.

In Apple, European Union, Google, Intellectual Property, International, Patent, Platforms, Taxes, Truth on the Market commercialization, Intellectual property, Patent, patent assertion entity, patent reform, patent troll, patent trolls, startups

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