This Week in Intellectual Property, June 9th
Charles Duan of the R Street Institute has an excellent article about the relationship between patents and national security. Even when patents do spur innovation, limit innovation in the short-term by restricting competition. In addition to the obvious costs of reduced competition when technology advances at breakneck pace, he points out the risks posed by “monocultures” in cybersecurity that occur when software patents exist. Such monocultures in software, just as in nature, make larger software systems more vulnerable if a bug is found.
