Jonathan Barnett gives talk on “How Patents Drive Innovation and Growth: Insights from the Biotech and Semiconductor Industries”

Professor Barnett’s research offers important insights into the complex changes taking place in the law of intellectual property. In his new book, he argues that “patents expand transactional choice by enabling smaller research-and-development (R&D)-intensive firms to compete against larger firms that wield difficult-to-replicate financing, production, and distribution capacities.” Further, his research demonstrates that “significant reductions in the strength of patent protection are likely to have unwelcome consequences as a matter of innovation and competition policy. Counterintuitively, weakening patents can raise entry barriers and shelter incumbents by disadvantaging firms that are rich in ideas but poor in the capital and expertise required to convert ideas into commercially viable products and services.”

Professor Barnett is the Torrey H. Webb Professor of Law at the University of Southern California, Gould School of Law, where he specializes in intellectual property and antitrust law, with a focus on transactional IP issues in IT and life sciences markets. In addition to teaching and publishing, he comments on IP and antitrust policy in The Hill, Bloomberg Law, Law360 and other online publications.

The event was well-attended and ended with a lively question-and-answer session, run by the Legislative Committee Chairpersons Michael Bergman, Myron Kassaraba and Deirdre Sanders. The recording of the event is available here.