The CP has zero effect on broad innovation.

Other scholars focus on the length of patent term protection. Economist Gary Becker has argued that “[t]he current patent length of 20 years (longer for drug companies) from the date of filing for a patent can be cut in half without greatly discouraging innovation.”104 He observed that “[e]ven pharmaceutical and biotech companies, the main examples where patents are clearly necessary to encourage innovation, usually do not need more than about a decade of monopoly power to encourage their very large investments in new drugs.”105 This view is supported by law professor Brian Love, who noted the negative impact of a long patent term:

In a world in which at least some products are out of date by the time they hit store shelves, the last few years of a two-decade-long patent term seem unlikely to incentivize greater innovation. To the contrary, it appears that the waning years of patent protection primarily benefit litigation-oriented patentees who do little more with their aging patent rights than impose steep legal costs on those selling successful products. 106

In The Case Against Patents, economists Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine offer a broader attack on patents:

Both theory and evidence suggest that while patents can have a partial equilibrium effect of improving incentives to invent, the general equilibrium effect on innovation can be negative. The historical and international evidence suggests that while weak patent systems may mildly increase innovation with limited side effects, strong patent systems retard innovation with many negative side effects.107

They note that “[p]atents are time limited, which makes it relatively easy to phase them out by phasing in ever shorter patent durations.”108 They also suggest that “[i]f the US economy is to have patents, we may want to start tailoring their length and breadth to different sectoral needs.” 109

Their conclusion is echoed in a recent Economist cover story, Time to Fix Patents, which calls the current patent system a creator of “a parasitic ecology of trolls and defensive patent-holders,” and calls for a shorter patent term:

Patents also last too long. Protection for 20 years might make sense in the pharmaceutical industry because to test a drug and bring it to market can take more than a decade. But in industries like information technology, the time from brain wave to production line, or line of code, is much shorter. When patents lag behind the pace of innovation, firms end up with monopolies on the building-blocks of an industry. . . . Even pharmaceutical firms could live with shorter patents if the regulatory regime allowed them to bring treatments to market sooner and for less upfront cost. 110