The Battle Over Patents: History and the Politics of Innovation

The Industrial Revolution as a collective action problem: The House of Commons games patents of monopoly, November 1601

“…Nor did any such reference appear in his 1993 Nobel Prize lecture. North, indeed, seems to have changed his mind about the economic value of patents for innovation, and in that change he seems to have anticipated the current debate over their economic value (Bessen & Meurer, 2008; Boldrin & Levine, 2008; Haber & Lamoreaux, 2021; Kinsella, 2008; Moser 2013). Nonetheless, it is still generally believed that North showed not only that the Glorious Revolution inaugurated modern patent laws, but that those patents for innovation and invention were also an essential basis of that revolution: see, for example, Aghion et al (2021, pp.…”