Patents and R & D investment and growth

James Besson and Michael J Meurer have published a book Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureacrats and Lawyers put Innovators at Risk and, in the first of four articles, have published a summary of their argument ... 

 over at Patently-O.

Unsurprisingly (so far), they conclude that pharmaceuticals is the one area where there are clear winners.  

One study of cross-country studies reported:

They find, in fact, that lagged R&D (R&D from five years earlier) is positively correlated with subsequent intellectual property rights strength. This suggests that there is, indeed, a significant reverse causality.

I did find interesting their conclusions from a study of what happens over time when patents in England (Great Britain?) have been strengthened:

[Lerner] finds that overall foreign inventors increased their patenting in countries that strengthened their patent laws. However, domestic inventors actually patented at a lower rate after the change, both within their country and at the British Patent Office. Why the decline in English patents? Probably because there was less invention after patents were strengthened.