The blogosphere is rightfully abuzz over the recent paper by Bessen, Meurer and Ford. They are extremely careful researchers. They focus on litigation over software patents and measure losses to the victims of patent lawsuits and gains to the trolls who bring them by looking at changes in stock market valuations. They find the net loss to the economy from these lawsuits running at about $80 billion per year. They conclude

that the loss of billions of dollars of wealth associated with these lawsuits harms society. While the lawsuits increase incentives to acquire vague, over-reaching patents, they decrease incentives for real innovation overall

Patents: your government discouraging innovation.

Interesting, you go from a well-researched paper by Bessen, Meurer and Ford on software patents to a statement that is a huge leap for the subject. A better final statement would have been:

Software patents: Your government discouraging software innovation.

Last Anonymous:

Would it not be more accurate to say:

Patent Trolls: People who abuse a system to enrich themselves.

I have this same issue with people who abuse any system, regardless of whether it is disability, Medicare, unemployment, or insurance. For any system, regardless of what that system is, it can and will be abused by those people out for themselves first.