Proponents of patents push back by noting that while slowing innovation may be bad, without patents the reduction in investment would be much larger. To counter that claim, Boldrin and Levine use a logic partly based on our diffusion model. A useful product based on new knowledge will spread quickly through the population of buyers. That was true of the radio, television, Google’s search engine, and Facebook. This creates a first-mover advantage. The innovator can still benefit, but only by producing something with the idea. With a patent, an inventor can wait for others to implement the idea and profit. Boldrin and Levine also question how much credit the inventor deserves anyway. If breakthroughs were the result of a solitary genius, and most ideas would never have been produced without incentives, then the case for patents is stronger. The rugged landscape model suggests that difficult problems may have multiple workable solutions. New inventions, particularly those that combine existing ideas and technology such as the car, the telephone, and online auctions, may be natural occurrences not acts of genius. Any number of people might have made these innovations given the ideas swirling around in the community of thinkers. The simultaneity of major discoveries—calculus (Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz), the telephone (Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray), and the natural selection theory of evolution (Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace)—supports that inference. In sum, many-model thinking shows advantages and disadvantages to patents. The deeper, more nuanced understanding the models provide argues for a more flexible patent policy.
On patents and how knowing different models can help us develop a more nuanced understanding on patent policy. If we assume that innovation is the result of solitary genius, then patents will definitely be helpful in promoting innovation on an aggregate basis as there will be a higher incentive for people to create new things and not get ripped off. However, if innovation is a result of spontaneity with systems and things (including humans) falling into place, then patents might actually be an impediment to actually taking innovation forward.
