Patents are not useful message of innovation
Mazzucato 14, PhD, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (Mariana, “The Entrepreneurial State,” Kindle Edition)
Myth 4: We Live in a Knowledge Economy – Just Look at all the Patents!
Similarly to the myth that ‘innovation is about R&D’, a misunderstanding exists in relation to the role of patents in innovation and economic growth. For example, when policymakers look at the number of patents in the pharmaceutical industry, they presume it is one of the most innovative sectors in the world. This rise in patents does not however reflect a rise in innovation, but a change in patent laws and a rise in the strategic reasons why patents are being used. In ICT there has been a shift in the use of patents from the development and protection of proprietary technologies, resulting from in-house R&D, to cross-licensing in open systems, with the purpose of buying in technology (and the related patents) produced elsewhere (Chesbrough 2003; Grindley and Teece 1997). This has caused the R&D budgets of large companies, such as IBM, to fall at the same time that their patent numbers rose (Lazonick 2009, 88–9). Not recognizing these dynamics cause a focus on the number of patents to be misguided.