CP - Prizes - MSDI 2024

MSDI - Ban Patents / Prizes CP
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1NC – Shell
Text: The United States Federal Government should abolish patents, replacing current patent incentives with prize financing for successful innovations.
CP solves - Replacing patents with prizes solves the case.
Baker et al. 17’ – Dean, Co-founded CEPR, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in 1999. His areas of research include Housing, Macroeconomics, Intellectual Property, Social Security, Medicare and European labour markets. Arjun Jayadev, Joseph Stiglitz, “Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Development: A BETTER SET OF APPROACHES FOR THE 21st CENTURY”, AccessIBSA, https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/d8-xg80-ct59, xx-xx-2017
There are actually a variety of alternative ways of financing and incentivising research, within the current dispensation, many of which are in use today in different countries and contexts.
For simplicity, these approaches can be categorised as:
1. Direct financing through centralised mechanisms – where a government agency directly finances research and/or creative work. The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation in the United States are examples of centralised direct support for research. Many countries have some form of arts or culture council that supports creative work of various types.
2. Decentralised direct funding mechanisms – where research and/or creative work is directly supported and/or incentivised through a decentralised mechanism. A tax credit for research and development is one mechanism in this category; a tax credit means that the government is effectively paying part of the research costs. Another example is the tax deduction for charitable contributions for universities and other institutions to support research or creative activities in the United States. In this case, the government is effectively subsidising the spending of private individuals.14 Another example is the tax deduction for charitable contributions for universities and other institutions to support research or creative activities in the United States. In this case, the government is effectively subsidizing the spending of private individuals.
Neither of these systems requires patent or copyright monopolies, since the work is paid for upfront. On the other hand, we can have systems that finance research and creative work through ‘market based’ mechanisms, as described below.
3. Prize financing system – this is a system where a governmental body or a private foundation/research institution awards a prize for a successful innovation (or other creative activity). There have been some famous historical examples of prize systems, most notably the prize posted by the British government in 1714 for a method to accurately measure longitude, and another posted by the Royal Society for Arts and Technology for a mechanical solution to replace chimney sweeps. While prize systems are not currently in widespread use by governments, there are many prizes being privately offered. In recent years, there have been proposals in the US to provide prizes for drugs research (as proposed by Senator Sanders15) and for the development of renewable energy.
The patent, of course, is a prize (see below). Here, however, it is as if the government (or other party offering the prize) buys the patent, based on an assessment of its value, and then places it in the public domain so that its benefits could be realised as fully as possible, since it would be available at a relatively low licensing fee.
2NC
Solvency – 2NC
The patent system structurally hampers innovation due to rent seeking – the CP solves case and then some.
Boldrin & Levine 13 – Michele, Joseph G. Hoyt Distinguished Professor of Economics in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St Louis. David, an American economist. He is the Leverhulme International Professor of Economics at Royal Holloway, University of London. “The Case Against Patents”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 27, No. 1 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.27.1.3, xx-xx-2013 *Edited for language
The case against patents can be summarized briefly: there is no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity, unless evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity, unless productivity is identified with the number of patents awarded—which, as evidence shows, has no correlation with measured productivity. This disconnect is at the root of what is called the “patent puzzle”: in spite of the enormous increase in the number of patents and in the strength of their legal protection, the US economy has seen neither a dramatic acceleration in the rate of technological progress nor a major increase in the levels of research and development expenditure.
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 [slow] innovation with many negative side effects. More generally, the initial eruption of innovations leading to the creation of a new industry—from chemicals to cars, from radio and television to personal computers and investment banking—is seldom, if ever, born out of patent protection and is instead the fruit of a competitive environment. It is only after the initial stage of rampant growth ends that mature industries turn toward the legal protection of patents, usually because their internal growth potential diminishes and they become more concentrated. These observations, supported by a steadily increasing body of evidence, are consistent with theories of innovation emphasizing competition and first-mover advantage as the main drivers of innovation, and they directly contradict “Schumpeterian” theories postulating that government-granted monopolies are crucial to provide incentives for innovation. A properly designed patent system might serve to increase innovation at a certain time and place—and some patent systems, such as the late-nineteenth century German system allowing only process but not final product patents, have been associated with rapid innovation. Unfortunately, the political economy of government-operated patent systems indicates that such systems are susceptible to pressures that cause the ill effects of patents to grow over time. The political economy pressures tend to benefit those who own patents and are in a good position to lobby for stronger patent protection, but disadvantage current and future innovators as well as ultimate consumers. This explains why the political demand for stronger patent protection comes from old and stagnant industries and firms, not from new and innovative ones. Our preferred policy solution is to abolish patents entirely and to find other legislative instruments, less open to lobbying and rent seeking, to foster innovation when there is clear evidence that laissez-faire undersupplies it. However, if that policy change seems too large to swallow, we discuss in the conclusion a set of partial reforms that could be implemented as part of an incremental strategy of reducing the harm done by the patent system
Disclosures’ are a sham – they’re misleading, overly broad, and vague.
Meurer & Freilich 21’ – Michael, PhD and Professor of Law at Boston University. Janet, Associate Professor of Law at Fordham University. “Patent System Often Stifles the Innovation It Was Designed to Encourage”, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/patent-system-often-stifles-the-innovation-it-was-designed-to-encourage-148075, 03-16-2021
Too little information When an inventor gets a patent, she is supposed to reveal the secret sauce behind the invention in the patent, a public document. This allows scientists and engineers to learn about the invention and use that information to improve the technology. Or at least, that’s the theory. In practice, many inventors make shoddy disclosures. Experiments reported in patents are sometimes fictional and often rely on dubious methodology. For instance, patent law permits an inventor to disclose the fictional finding that a drug treats cancer as evidence that she deserves a patent on that drug. Inventors applying for patents are allowed to include predicted experimental results. The intent is to allow for earlier disclosure and to help smaller companies secure funding. But when evidence in patents is wrong, other innovators can be misled. Further, if other innovators want to figure out if the patented drug really treats cancer – or any other disease – they need a license from the patentee. Sometimes key pieces of evidence are missing entirely from patents. This happens when a patent covers aspects of a technology that the patentee didn’t actually invent. Imagine discovering that paper is a mediocre incandescent conductor in light bulbs and using that discovery to get a patent covering thousands of other conductors, including ones that, unbeknownst to you, work much better. Later innovators might want to figure out whether other substances are better conductors than paper, but they can’t even start experiments without a license. This happened to Edison. He was sued for patent infringement after discovering a far better conductor than that discovered by the patentee – but because the patent was written broadly, it nevertheless covered Edison’s invention. There is also too little information about the boundaries of patents. When an inventor gets a patent, she is also supposed to provide clear boundary information – what a patent application covers and what it doesn’t – to the public about her patent rights. The patent system fails to ensure this, however. The boundary information in patent applications is hidden for 18 months until the application is published, and even longer if the boundaries change later during examination. Once the patent is granted, lawyers, judges and the public often have difficulty reaching agreement on the meaning of boundary language that may be intentionally vague or ambiguous.
Engineers and lawyers vote neg.
Lapowskey 15 – Issie, Senior writer for WIRED covering the intersection of tech, politics, and national affairs. “EFF: If You Want to Fix Software Patents, Eliminate Software Patents”, https://www.wired.com/2015/02/eff-eliminate-software-patents/, 02-25-2015
That is by far the most incendiary proposal the Electronic Frontier Foundation offers in its comprehensive report on overhauling a painfully broken patent system. The report, two years in the making, suggests everything from strengthening the quality of patents to making patent litigation less costly. And there, on page 27 of the 29-page report, is "Abolish software patents."
The argument is that software patents may not just be flawed, but utterly unnecessary. This hasn't always been EFF's stance on patents, says Adi Kamdar, one of the report's authors. But as the group compiled the report, it received 16,500 public comments from people in the business, academic, and policy communities. The idea that patents should be eliminated entirely was a common theme.
"A big chunk of the engineers we talked to, and even some of the lawyers and activists and policy folk don't like software patents at all," Kamdar says. "They said it hinders their innovation flows when they think about creating new things, and the idea of operating in a patent minefield really hurts them."
And so the EFF came around to the idea that, at the least, Congress should commission a study to determine if software patents should exist to begin with. That is not as crazy as it may seem. As the report notes, New Zealand---albeit a country with a comparatively tiny tech community---recently amended its laws to prevent patenting software. And Kamdar adds that patents haven't always been such an integral part of the software world. Microsoft, for one, acquired just five patents in its first 15 years, during which it became a $1 billion company. Today, Microsoft applies for 2,000 to 2,500 patents annually.
"It's a peer pressure, all-the-cool-kids-are-doing-it system right now," say Kamdar. "As soon as one company starts acquiring patents everyone else thinks they need to for defensive purposes. That puts pressure on the whole system."
The problem is, unlike with other types of patents, software patents often cover every solution to a certain problem, rather than a specific solution, with a specific implementation. That leads to an abundance of vague, broad patents, so that even when smaller companies do acquire patents, they're unlikely to do them any good against a patent troll. And so, Kamdar says, many of the startups EFF talked to over the course of its research are operating as if patents can't protect them anyway, and forgo them altogether.
And so, if software patents were to disappear, Kamdar believes not much would change, except that patent trolls would lose their power, and large companies like Apple wouldn't have to keep paying them hundreds of millions of dollars for infringing on decades-old, overly broad patents.
A prize system is more likely to promote innovation by discouraging monopoly power
Joseph Stiglitz, Professor at Columbia University, Economic Foundations of Intellectual Property Rights, April 2008 57 Duke L.J. 1693 Lexis-Nexis
One alternative to the patent system is called the prize system. This entails giving a prize to whoever comes up with an innovation, or at least those innovations that meet announced objectives. For instance, the person who finds a cure or a vaccine for AIDS or for malaria would get a big prize. If a person comes up with a drug with slightly different side effects than existing drugs (but which is otherwise no more effective) he or she might get a small prize. In other words, the size of the prize would be calibrated by the magnitude of the contribution. This idea is actually an old one. The Royal Society of Arts and Technology have been advocating and even using prizes to incentivize the development of needed technologies for some two centuries. For instance, they thought it was important to come up with an alternative to chimney sweeps; small, underfed boys used to be sent down chimneys. It was not good for the health of these young boys and not a socially desirable way of cleaning chimneys; but not cleaning chimneys meant increasing the risk of fire, with serious consequences. Thus, the Royal Society offered a prize to anybody who invented a mechanical way of cleaning chimneys. The prize provided an incentive, and it worked. A patent system might also have motivated the development of a mechanical device (though it did not), but if it had, there might have been a problem. The owner of the patent might [*1720] have been tempted to attempt to maximize the return to his innovation by charging a high fee for its use. That might mean that only rich families could afford to use the mechanical device, and young boys' lives would have continued to be put at risk. There are a whole host of other things for which they have offered prizes. The current patent system is, of course, similar to a prize system, but it is a very inefficient one, because the "prize" is a grant of monopoly power, and with monopoly power there are incentives to restrict the use of the knowledge. One of the characteristics of a desirable innovation system is that the ideas and innovations, once developed, be widely used and disseminated, but the patent system is designed to restrict the use of knowledge. The alternative is to use the competitive market to ensure efficient dissemination; giving a license to a large number of people uses the force of competition to drive down the price and to increase the usage of the knowledge. In both cases, market forces are used: one is the incentive of a monopoly to restrict knowledge and raise prices, the other is the market force of competitive markets to drive down prices and extend the benefit of knowledge widely. Moreover, the prize system has the advantage that there is less incentive to waste money on advertising and to engage in other anticompetitive behaviors designed to enhance monopoly profits. I mentioned that the drug companies spend more on advertising and marketing than they do on research. These marketing expenditures are designed to reduce the elasticity of demand, which allows the owner of the patent to raise prices and increase monopoly profits. From a social point of view these expenditures are totally dissipative.
Prizes solve – incentivize innovation
Kavusturan 20 – Elif, Information technology lawyer with more than a decade of work with computer contracts, S.J.D. “REFORMING U.S. PATENT LAW TO ENABLE ACCESS TO ESSENTIAL MEDICINES IN THE ERA OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.”, Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, Vol. 18, No. 1, https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4650&context=wlulr, 11-xx-2020
D. Incentivizing R&D for Essential Medicine in The Absence of Patents
1. A National Prize Fund
A 2017 bill, the Medical Innovation Prize Fund Act, recently proposed a national prize fund.237 The bill recognized market exclusivity to be an “expensive, inefficient, and unfair mechanism to reward investments in new products”238 and asserted that drug development would benefit from “greater sharing of knowledge, data, materials, and technologies.”239 The bill recommended removing the link between R&D incentives and product prices, claiming that this will allow a dramatic decrease in the costs of innovation and an increase in access to inventions.240 The bill thus proposed to abolish patents and market exclusivity for drugs and biological products, as well as related manufacturing processes,241 and to fund R&D through a national prize fund.242
This Article similarly proposes a fund with a specific focus on essential medicines. Prizes will be awarded by a board, based on the impact of each drug on global public health,243 and payments will be conditioned upon abandonment of patents, if any. In addition to disclosure of all clinical trial data and other information enabling those “skilled in the art . . . to make and use” the invention,244 eligibility for prizes will require disclosure of all relevant information on the AI system used in the R&D process.
A national prize fund designed in this manner will provide the incentives necessary to sustain essential medicines research. The government will also be in a position to allocate prizes to encourage investment in certain areas over others. For instance, higher prizes may be offered to essential medicines with smaller markets, such as orphan drugs. Prizes for AI-enabled essential medicines will also encourage the use of AI in the innovation process and allow access to data that will build a better understanding of how AI systems work.
The counterplan incentivizes innovation at lower costs.
Kavusturan 20 – Elif, Information technology lawyer with more than a decade of work with computer contracts, S.J.D. “REFORMING U.S. PATENT LAW TO ENABLE ACCESS TO ESSENTIAL MEDICINES IN THE ERA OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.”, Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, Vol. 18, No. 1, https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4650&context=wlulr, 11-xx-2020
The patent system, and the intellectual property regime in general, is one of the many available models aimed at incentivizing innovation.199 Government incentives such as prizes and grants currently complement patents in fields of research where additional incentivization is necessary.200 Many countries also rely on tax incentives to increase R&D activity.201 The United States offers tax incentives for research and experimental expenditures, as well as R&D tax credits, including a credit for pharmaceutical companies enga

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