Back in September I posted an announcement about a new book that contributed in interesting ways to our understanding of patent/intellectual property issues. Now Julio Cole’s full review of the book in the Independent Review is available online. An excerpt:
Should we really be surprised that the patent system’s internal dynamics have finally brought us to the point at which the potential profits of patenting have, for most industries, been entirely gobbled up by lawyers’ fees? Isn’t that outcome what we should expect after having studied the literature on rent seeking? If patents are really nothing more than special privileges granted by the state, then wouldn’t we expect the monopoly rents derived from such grants to become dissipated eventually through steady increases in rent-seeking costs?
