Adam B Jaffe and Josh Lerner, Innovation and Its Discontents, Princeton University Press, 2004.

Some of the penchant for patents may be silly or a result of misguided competitive zeal, according to Josh Lerner, an economist at the Harvard Business School.

"This is a creative response to that fundamental issue in the patent system," said Josh Lerner, a professor at the Harvard Business School.

Josh Lerner, a Harvard Business School professor and an author of "Innovation and Its Discontents," argues that the potential costs of patent litigation are higher for small technology companies.

The Harvard report by William R. Kerr, Josh Lerner, and Antoinette Schoar, however, shows evidence that angel-funded startup companies are less likely to fail than companies that rely on other forms of initial financing.

"Historically, the Patent Office has always faced challenges having to do with new technologies," said Josh Lerner, a professor at the Harvard Business School.

As Josh Lerner of the Harvard Business School and Jean Tirole of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ask in a recent paper: "Why should thousands of top-notch programmers contribute freely to the provision of a public good?"

Josh Lerner, a professor at Harvard Business School, said that the patent office had made an effort to improve patent quality in the last few years.

According to Josh Lerner, a Harvard Business School professor and the co-author of "Innovation and Its Discontents," a tough-minded book about patents, the issuance of patents like the '823 has become an ever bigger problem in recent years.

"There's been a tendency on the part of policy makers in the United States to equate stronger intellectual property rights with more innovation in a very simplistic way," said Josh Lerner, an economist at Harvard Business School.