Economists: Markets outperform patents in promoting intellectual discovery

there — and focus buying and selling those.”

This resulted in a large number of different people trying different ideas each time the game was played. Allowing people to benefit even if they only tackle a part of a problem might well lead to more collaboration, and to the faster development of an ultimate solution to the whole problem, Bossaerts adds. “This is important, because the nature of knapsack problems is such that one can only be sure that the optimal solution has been found after one has tried everything,” he says.

To win in the patent group, on the other hand, required coming up with the right answer first, which seemed to remove the incentive for the large majority of participants to even attempt solving the problem. “In one example, there was a woman who won a couple of times in a row,” Bossaerts recalls. “She had over $120, and everyone else had nothing. They just gave up trying, saying, ‘Why bother? She’ll just figure it out before us anyway.’”

How would these sorts of market forces work in the real world? Bossaerts uses the concept of scientists working to invent a fuel-cell catalyst. “If a scientist is really convinced that platinum, for instance, is the best catalyst for his fuel cell, the best way to go, he would go out and buy a bunch of platinum futures, knowing that once his invention got into the public domain, the items that go into that invention—in this case, platinum—will go up in price.”

Without a patent on the invention, other people would also be free to create platinum-based fuel cells. But there would still be a benefit to being the first: That inventor would be the one able to buy up platinum futures when the prices were at their lowest. “In the market system, if you’re first, you still have the advantage,” Bossaerts explains. “But you also give the second and third person a chance to profit from their work as well.”

Bossaerts’s next step is to try to collect data to explain why the market system works. “Our conjecture is that it’s due to this idea of overconfidence, that most people think they are better than most other people. But this study wasn’t able to test that idea specifically, so we’re hoping to do that in future studies.”

Bossaerts is well aware that his ideas — even with solid data to back them up — are controversial. People are very protective of their patents, and of the system that guards them, he says. In reality, says Bossaerts, his team’s findings should be seen as reassuring, rather than threatening. “The take-home message from this study is that one should not be too nervous about protecting intellectual property,” he explains. “There are other ways you can benefit from your efforts as well, as long as you have a functioning free market economy in place. Even if you get rid of most patent laws, people will still innovate.”

-read more in Debrah Meloso et al., “Promoting Intellectual Discovery: Patents Versus Markets,” Science 323, no. 5919 (6 March 2009): 1335-39 (DOI: 10.1126/science.1158624) (sub. req.)