The patent reform debate continues to rage on, with the US Senate now considering a bill targeting so-called “patent trolls.” TF’s Geoffrey Manne explains the issue in a recent story on The Daily Caller:

While some believe that if the PTO maintained higher standards for patent rights – only awarding licenses for inventions that are truly novel – job creation would rise to new levels, others argue that the current intellectual property laws are what has allowed for unprecedented levels of innovation over the past several decades.

Geoffrey Manne, a senior fellow at the nonprofit tech-advocacy organization TechFreedom, explained that “the market is built on the back of property rights,” and “if there is anything the government should be doing, it is defining and enforcing those rights.”

He told The Daily Caller News Foundation that in order for entrepreneurs or companies to invest the significant amount of resources and time it takes to build something patentable, there needs to be a guarantee that they will have rights – and a return on investment – on their creation.

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