Re:Patent Troll Lodsys Settles for Nothing to Avoid Trial
by rayiner on Thursday October 03, 2013 @07:13AM
(#6488148)
Sure, but why is that smaller incentive not the right amount of incentive? You can create incentives for a lot of things, but generally those are distortionary. What economic justification is there for the idea that there needs to be a bigger incentive than the market provides?
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Re:Patent Troll Lodsys Settles for Nothing to Avoid Trial
by arjunnarayan on Thursday October 03, 2013 @05:43PM
(#6492329)
That's an empirical question, and deserves an empirical treatment. I cannot do that in a comment. Luckily, this question has been thoroughly investigated for almost two centuries. If you want a serious treatment, you might look to:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/825483?seq=2 http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/uclr52&d...
But if you want a more casual treatment that explains it (and all the associated issues like why bonds and stocks and debt contracts even exist), I really recommend The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson.