Adam Mossoff on the Value of Patents
ICLE Academic Affiliate Adam Mossoff was a guest on National Public Radio’s Planet Money podcast to discuss the purpose and value of patents in the economy. The full episode is embedded below.
MALONE: Adam Mossoff – law professor at George Mason University, patent expert, and knows a lot about how patents get turned into actual, you know, money.
MOSSOFF: You know, patents are property rights, and they, like all property rights, might lead to great success or may not.
MALONE: Property rights. And Adam gave us this comparison that I find really useful. He said, you know, a patent is just an idea sketched out and then legally tied to the inventor. And that really is kind of like somebody who say, you know, just owns a piece of vacant land.
BERAS: Yeah. Adam says vacant land isn’t inherently a business. Its owner would have to figure out what to do with it.
MOSSOFF: They can sit and wait for the land to grow in value. They can lease it out and become a landlord. They can build a factory on it. They can build an office building on it. They can build a home. And then, they can sell that home.