A current refrain in patent policy discourse is that “overly-broad” patents of “dubious validity” retard innovation. We briefly review expressions of the thesis to show that they reduce to the allegation that disagreements over enforceable patent scope and/or validity harm innovation....

Designing around patents is prevalent but not often appreciated as a means by which patents promote economic development through competition. We provide a novel detailed empirical study of the extent and timing of designing around patent claims. We study the filing rate of incandescent...