The UK Patent System: Promoting or Hindering Innovation?

As early as the nineteenth century, debates about some form of protection for inventors through the patent system as against its abolition in favour of free trade blossomed. At first, arguments were based on a moral justification that natural property rights existed in ideas as much as physical property. Popularly attributed to John Locke, this theory attributed 'natural law' rights to intangible property. A second argument developed which rested on the reasoning that 'justice and fairness' demands that the innovator should be entitled to some form of reward because of the benefits the society enjoys from the direct or indirect use of his invention. Propounded by Mill, Smith and Bentham, the patent system guarantees the innovator a just reward, which could not be guaranteed if left to market forces. Due to failures of both theories to address several issues, which are discussed at length in this work, a third argument emerged which simply states that patents are necessary to secure economic development. The incentive theory assumes that in other to motivate the inventor some form of economic benefits should be guaranteed by the patent system.