Patents are inflationary – the entire purpose is to provide exclusive rights
David Jones, 2024 – executive director of the High Tech Inventors Alliance. Questions for the Record from Senator Alex Padilla , Hearing on “The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act – Restoring Clarity, Certainty, and Predictability to the U.S. Patent System” 1/24, https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2024-01-23_-_qfr_responses_-_jones.pdf
Regarding the impact on consumers, the whole purpose of the patent system is to provide inventors with exclusive rights that allow them to constrain competition and charge higher prices. The increased profit from these higher prices is the incentive to innovate that is provided by the patent system. In a well-functioning patent system, the hope is that consumers will benefit more from the increased pace of innovation than they will be harmed by increased prices. Unfortunately, PERA would substantially increase prices to consumers without producing any significant countervailing benefits from innovation. This is because PERA would expand patent eligibility to non-technological fields, such as business methods, where patent protection has been shown to reduce rather than increase R&D investment.2 Thus, the predictable impact of PERA on consumers would be to increase prices and reduce selection, while at the same time depriving them of the benefits they otherwise would have had from increased innovation.