Concerns have been raised that the upsurge of 3D printing technology would disrupt the patent system. The central … us to rethink patent law. The paper splits up this question by looking at two facets in more depth – patentability and …/consumers). The paper concludes that the wide uptake of 3D printing does not fundamentally challenge the premises of patent law. 3D …

Using an original dataset of over 1,000,000 patents and empirical methods, we find that the patent system perpetuates … research and development expenditures, while those already holding many patents increase their innovation efforts. This … barriers to entry (e.g., licensing costs or potential litigation).A hallmark of this type of behavior is securing large patent …