Longitudinal analysis confirms antitrust more effectively boosts innovation

Herbert J., Ben V. & Dorothy Willie Professor, University of Iowa College of Law. "Antitrust and the Patent System: A Reexamination" (2015). All Faculty Scholarship. 1820. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/1820

F. Comparative Advantage Legal policy makers must make decisions with the tools and information available to them, even if they are not perfect. At this time our knowledge about the relationship between antitrust law and traditional competition, while imperfect, is much more complete than our knowledge about the relationship between patent law and innovation—and more particularly, about the impact of particular patent doctrines on innovation. In that setting it is not irrational to condemn a practice that is highly likely to decrease welfare via collusion or exclusion in the shorter run based on nothing but an unsupported hunch that it might also increase innovation.