Conclusion

For more than a decade, U.S. courts, legislators, and antitrust regulators have sought to weaken IP protections in technology markets. An organizational approach to IP analysis raises doubts about whether this policy trajectory is consistent with the public interest in supporting both the innovation and the implementation of new technologies. The economics, history, and politics of the U.S. patent system support the view that weak-IP regimes induce an organizational bias by favoring firms that operate under integrated and platform-based business models for monetizing R&D, which raises an implicit barrier to entry by smaller R&D-specialized entities that rely on patents to enter into contractual transactions to execute the commercialization functions required to reach market. Weakening IP protections can protect large incumbents against the competitive threat posed by smaller entrants that often produce the most dramatic forms of technological innovation.