Patents versus ex post rewards: A new look

Economic studies that aim at comparing the patent system social efficiency versus an ex post reward system rest on an outdated view of patents. They assume that firms use the patent system only in order to be granted a short-term commercial monopoly rent. This assumption is convenient because it allows straightforward comparisons between patents and rewards but it is not confirmed by empirical studies, which stress that in many industries most firms use patents as strategic devices to trade technologies and to ease R&D collaborations. This change leads to rethinking the framework of the patent-reward debate.