the patent office. Traditional reforms have focused almost exclusively on making the patent office more effective at … examination. This Article instead looks at patent quality from an applicant’s perspective, and evaluates how certain patent rules … be valid. The result is a distinctive set of tools that could be used to improve patent quality without additional …

with low social value that increase the social cost of the patent system. Third, the trade-off between the patent policy …. Beyond these three implications, economic theory also pleads for a mechanism design approach: an optimal patent system could … be based on a menu of different degrees of patent protection where stronger protection would involve higher fees …