Patent policy and innovation: Do legal rules deliver effective economic outcomes?

This book presents a compelling attack on the patent system. Thoughtfully analyzing the existing empirical literature and providing her own painstaking study of business method patents, Hazel Moir explains how it is that, despite the intuitions of economists, social scientists, lawyers, judges, and even some inventors, patents have spread geographically and technologically, with increasingly broad rights becoming ever-easier to obtain. Bravely and persuasively, she recommends policymakers tackle one of the most vexing issues in patent law: the quantum of new knowledge that ought to be required to make an invention worthy of protection.'