Senior VP Robert D. Stoner participates as a panelist in the FTC/DOJ Roundtables on Competition and Intellectual Property Law and Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy.

Dr. Stoner  participated as a panelist in the FTC/DOJ Roundtables on Competition and Intellectual Property Law and Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy, both in Berkeley (February 26, 2002) and in Washington, DC (October 30, 2002). At the Berkeley session, he presented a review of the economic literature on the relationship between patent protection and innovation. His talk included a discussion of the various rationales that have been put forth for patent protection, the theory of optimal patent length and breadth, the notion of patent races, and the growing empirical literature in this area. In the DC session, he participated in a panel discussion, along with a number of prominent scholars and practitioners, on several IP-related topics, including the economic goals of the patent system, the interpretation and application of the obviousness doctrine, the competitive consequences of overly broad patents, the potential abuse of continuations, and whether there should be special recognition of “research tools.”