"An Empirical Look at Software Patents" here.
From the abstract:
We find evidence that software patents substitute for R&D at the firm level; they are associated with lower R&D intensity. This result occurs primarily in industries known for strategic patenting and is difficult to reconcile with the traditional incentive theory of patents."
Table 2 shows that 70 percent of American software patents are assigned to U.S. assignees, followed by Japan with 18, Germany with 3 and Great Britain with 2 percent.
This confirms with hard data the natural assumption that most software patents are held by American companies, and that legalizing them in Europe will not help European interests, but rather will lead to large net payments from the European software industry to American patent holders.
Found at Furdlog.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at June 16, 2004 04:55 PM | TrackBack