Bronwyn H. Hall and Megan MacGarvie's The Private Value of Software Patents takes an economic view of the patent system.
The first conclusion of the paper states "First, we conclude that, as measured by the stock market's reaction to legal decisions expanding the patentability of software, there is no evidence that the expansion of software patentability benefited firms in the software industry."
The second conclusion, derived from an analysis of stock values, states "Combining these two sets of findings, we conclude that the market evaluated software patents as unimportant ex ante and expected that the expansion of software patentability would negatively affect firms in downstream sectors and firms without patents."
If there is no actual benefit to the software industry why do we need to grant such monopolies?
