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"The Patent, Used as a Sword" ("The iEconomy" series, front page, Oct. 8) makes the valuable point that patents in industries like software can sometimes impede innovation rather than promote it (as they are supposed to do). But in fact, the article doesn't go far enough.
It argues that software patents may reduce innovation because they are too broad, vague and loose — criticisms that are well taken.
But if these were their only shortcomings, then simply tightening patent standards would solve everything. Unfortunately, the problem is deeper than that.
Specifically, in the software industry, progress is highly sequential: progress is typically made through a large number of small steps, each building on the previous ones. If one of those steps is patentable, then the patent holder can effectively block (or at least slow down) subsequent progress by setting high license fees.
Moreover, like any other monopolist, it has the incentive to set such fees.
Thus, in an industry with highly sequential innovation, it may be better for society to scrap patents altogether than try to tighten them.
ERIC S. MASKIN
Cambridge, Mass., Oct. 8, 2012
The writer, a professor of economics at Harvard, is a 2007 Nobel laureate in economics.
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