Blogs review: the patent war in IT

What’s at stake: Apple’s recent victory in its ongoing dispute over IP rights with Samsung has received a great deal of attention from regulators, academics and the media worldwide. It is, however, just one of the many battles of an ongoing war in the IT sector over intellectual protection. Standard economic analysis sees IP protection as a trade-off between securing a fair reward for innovators while ensuring that future innovation is not jeopardized and that customers pay a fair price. Although the aim of the patent system is to strike the right balance between these two broad objectives, recent developments – for example patent trolls, patent thickets and ambush strategies – suggest that the balance has tipped towards incumbents.