As commonly understood, the U.S. patent system is a utilitarian regime that employs exclusive rights and market incentives to promote technological progress. Unlike international and foreign regimes, the domestic patent system less explicitly addresses non-utilitarian issues such as access,...

Technologies such as social media, autonomous vehicles, and “big data” analytics generate enormous benefits for society, but they also create substantial harms. Many of these effects take the form of externalities—external benefits and harms that a decisionmaker (such as an inventor)...