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Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice Advance Access published online on October 28, 2008
Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, doi:10.1093/jiplp/jpn202
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved

IP in Review

Making a success of a failure

Matthew Fisher*
Patent Failure – How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk
James Bessen and Michael Meurer
Princeton University Press, 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0691134918, hard cover, pp. 352
£17.95.

The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below.

This reviewer has to admit that he initially approached Bessen and Meurer, Patent Failure – How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk, with a degree of trepidation. Spurred on by the sensationalist title and the moody (oh-so clichéd) picture of a shattered light bulb that adorns the front cover, he was expecting tales of woe. He anticipated discussion of patents on peanut-butter-jelly sandwiches,1 methods of exercising cats2 and perhaps even swinging on a swing,3 to illustrate how the US patent system is going to Hell in a hand-basket. What he got, however, was a far more considered, nuanced, and all-round robust enterprise. Indeed, as the authors themselves point out: ‘while stories about frivolous patents and frivolous lawsuits are troubling ... better evidence is needed to guide patent reform’.4 As a consequence, Bessen and Meurer's . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Correspondence: * University of Bristol. Email: Matt.Fisher@bristol.ac.uk


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