
Google Tech Talk August 16, 2010 ABSTRACT Presented by Andrew W. Torrance. The study of law has traditionally focused on close scrutiny of judicial decisions, statutes, regulations, and scholarly articles. We offer an alternative approach: experimental law. The Patent Game is an interactive web application, built using Ruby on Rails®, designed to be a simplified model of the patent system. Using The Patent Game, one may experimentally explore how patent systems work. Groups of human players can compete or collaborate with one another to come up with valuable new inventions, and then patent, make, sell, license, and buy these inventions. Patent owners may even litigate against patent infringers. By programmatically controlling various parameters of patent law, The Patent Game enables rigorous experiments into the impacts of those parameters on both choices human players make and various metrics of patent system performance. We have conducted several experimental studies so far, sometimes with surprising results. Data from our first study suggest that a commons offering no patent protection may generate more innovation, productivity, and wealth than a patent system. Our latest study, completed in July 2010, suggests that a patent system in which infringement results in monetary damages (a "liability rule") may generate more innovation, productivity, and wealth than a patent system in which infringement results in an injunction (a "property rule"). Although The Patent Game <b>...</b>
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