Insights
Turns Out $29B Isn’t the Point At All
November 13, 2014
- Buzz
- Turns Out $29B Isn’t the Point At All
Last year, we asked if “$29B was the point?” Based on the popular findings from James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer’s “The Direct Costs from NPE Disputes” study in 2012, the pair have recently reversed course on their definitions of NPEs — so much so that the editor in chief of Intellectual Asset Management Magazine, Joff Wild, asks whether their argument on the “costs '[patent] trolls' impose on businesses, the taxes they levy on innovation, and the subsequent harm they do to the U.S. economy generally is now rendered completely meaningless.”
Despite the fact the term “patent troll” has become a rallying cry in the patent reform debate and a very convenient pejorative in patent infringement disputes these days, we’ve long since argued the term has been stretched to the point where it has almost no meaning at all. Looks like the professors might agree with us on that after all.
