Against Intellectual Monopoly

software industry is currently much less innovative than it was
at its inception may appear odd to fans of World of Warcraft and of "major" innovations such as massive multiplayer online role-playing games (known as MMORPGs).
Still, this is the very robust, if controversial, finding of most empirical studies carried
out by the experts in this area. Incredulous readers should visit James Bessen's site
at http://www.researchoninnovation.org/online.htm for starters, and then continue
on with the references therein. Alternatively, all one needs to do is enter "software
patents innovations" in Google and then click happily away.
    2. Meaning "superior inventors, capable of discovering and finding many ingenious
machineries." The text of this first patent is reproduced in many historical books,
e.g. Kaufer (2002), p. 5.
    3. Price (2006), p. 138; the complete text of the Statute of Monopolies can be found in
the appendix to Price (2006).
    4. Ibid, p. 135.
    5. Stigler (1956), p. 275.
    6. Ibid, p. 274. Stigler argues against the Schumpeterian view that monopoly is a good
thing because it brings forth innovation. As indicated by the quotations in the text,
his view, like ours, is that plentiful innovation occurs under competition.
    7. Nuvolari (2004a), p. 354.
    8. That Trevithick did not patent his invention is documented in Rowe (1953).
    9. The Cornwall mining industry experience is studied in Nuvolari (2004a, 2004b),
where data on the fuel efficiency, the "duty," of steam engines can be found. An analogous episode is that of Cleveland's iron producers - Cleveland, United Kingdom,
not Ohio - deftly documented and discussed in Allen (1983). Around the middle
of the nineteenth century, the iron producers managed to fiercely compete while
allowing technical information on the development and improvements of the blast
furnace to flow freely from one company to the other. Firms in industries involving
iron and coal, apparently, are prone to practicing invention and innovations without
patents and intellectual monopoly protection; Adams and Dirlam (1966) tells the
story for the big-steel industry post-Second World War.
    10. Historical analyses of the agricultural sector before the advent of patenting can be
found in McClelland (1997) for the United States, and in Campbell and Overton
(1991) for Europe. Detailed studies of the "nineteenth and early twentieth century ... stream of biological innovations" in U.S. agriculture are, for example, those
of Olmstead and Rhode (2002) for grain and cereals, Olmstead and Rhode (2003)
for cotton, and Barragan Arce (2005) for fruit trees. Olmstead and Rhode (2003)
also document how, in the cotton-farming sector, "inventors, during an early phase
of the product cycle, actually encouraged consumers to copy and disseminate their
intellectual property."
    11. The estimates of agricultural TFP for 1948-2002 are taken from the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, Table 1, at http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/agproductivity/ (accessed
February 23, 2008).
    12. Crop yield data is from the National Agriculture Statistics Service, online at
http://www.nass.usda.gov/QuickStats/ (accessed February 23, 2008).
    13. The information on patents of corn hybrids is from Urban (2000).

    14. More detailed facts concerning Almeria are in Costas and Heuvelink (2000). In
case you doubt our statement that Almeria's horticulture is probably the most
efficient agricultural enclave in theworld, check out http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu (accessed
February 23, 2008). One of the many stories of innovation with imitation and
competition we have not told, but that should be told, is that of the extremely
successful Taiwanese machine-tool industry, an account of which is in Sonobe,
Kawakami, and Otsuka (2003). Quoting only this, though, amounts to doing an
injustice to so many others - but even books have limited capacity.
    15. The satellite images of Almeria are from NASA and are reproduced widely and in
color, for example at http://www.iberianature.com (accessed February 23, 2008) or,
courtesy of NASA, from http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/ (accessed February 23, 2008).
    16. The history of maglioni in the Italian Northeast comes mostly from the first-hand
experience of one of us; a chronology of Benetton is at www.museedelapub.org.
    17. Innovation in the financial industry prior to patents is documented in two papers
by Tufano (1989, 2003) and in a recent paper by Herrera and Schroth (2004). A less
academic