Scott Duke Kominers, Columnist

One Thing You Don't Need Is Stronger Patents

Unless you're a troll. Then you thank Congress for proposing more protection for patent holders.

July 6, 2017 at 10:30 AM UTC

Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate of the Harvard University department of economics.

The quality varies.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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There are lots of patents floating around that don’t represent bona fide inventions.

The office that evaluates patent applications is overwhelmed, and doesn’t really have a mechanism to conclusively reject low-quality applications. As a result, clever and persistent lawyers can wrangle patents for long-established technologies like GPS tracking and scanning and emailing documents, without adding innovative ideas.