We can see that cost today as tech companies like Google spend billions on "defensive patents," which are essentially useless other than as a protection against lawsuits. We see it whenever a cool startup firm is forced to license a bogus patent from a litigious troll. And we see it in the untold dollars spent on legal fees and unnecessary patent filings for ludicrously broad or impractical ideas. The authors' extreme case in point: Somebody out there actually patented a method for moving information through the fifth dimension.* As in faster than the speed of light.

What do we get from all this? Precious little, the paper argues. They find virtually no statistical evidence that rising patent applications actually make our economy more productive.

Eliminating patents altogether, Boldrin and Levine say, would also have fewer negative consequences than most of us assume. Most industries, they argue, only resort to patent litigation once their pace of innovation has slowed. As long as they still cranked out out new, popular products, companies like Apple would continue to profit by being the first to market, which often confers a long-term advantage.

The poster child for strong patent protection is usually the pharmaceutical industry, as drugs are easily copied and can cost upwards of a billion dollars to develop. Here, Boldrin and Levine admit that the government would likely need to step in. But rather than giving companies a legal monopoly over their formulas, the authors suggest we should modify the drug approval process to let makers start recouping their costs faster. They would also set up a prize system to reward companies that invent the new medicines we need.

Because ending all patent protections immediately would be impractical, Boldrin and Levine advocate several transitional steps, such as shortening patent terms. "The aim of policy, in general, should be that of slowly but surely decreasing the strength of intellectual property interventions," they write, "but the final goal cannot be anything short of abolition."

Again, it's a somewhat radical idea -- but maybe one that deserves a place in the debate.

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*In an earlier version of this post, I originally wrote "...the fifth dimension. As in the Bruce Willis movie." I was actually thinking of The Fifth Element at the time. I deeply, deeply regret the error, and can only hope my nerd cred has not been irreparably damaged.