Antitrust and patent law are complementary

Today, it is widely recognized that patent and antitrust drive innovation in different but complementary ways. Both disciplines promote dynamic efficiency: that is, a system of property rights and market rules that create appropriate incentives for invention, innovation, and risk taking—delivering the greatest returns for society not just for today, but tomorrow as well. The patent grant does this by providing incentives for inventors to take risks and make investments in research and development. Patents transform a claimed piece of intellectual progress into a property right, allowing the inventor to exclude others from using that invention during the term of the patent. Our intellectual property framework further advances follow-on innovation through public disclosure of the invention. Antitrust's core mission is to appropriately foster and protect the competitive environment by preventing certain conduct that threatens free markets. This environment is what pushes companies to constantly innovate and allows them to profit when they do. Antitrust recognizes the critical role that intellectual property rights play in driving innovation and so values these rights. Yet antitrust applies the same analytical framework to intellectual property as it does to other forms of property, and imposes some rules about how the patent monopoly can—and cannot—be used. Thus, antitrust and patent law work together to create and preserve the appropriate incentives for technological progress by creating property rights and preserving competition around those rights.