Weak Patent Rights Reward Copycats: Alden Abbott on Antitrust, Patents & Innovation

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, our host and the founder of IPWatchdog, Gene Quinn, speaks with Alden Abbott, who is Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and former General Counsel at the Federal Trade Commission. Abbott brings a rare combination of antitrust, intellectual property, administrative agency, and law-and-economics experience to a wide-ranging conversation about innovation policy, competition, and the practical consequences of government intervention in markets. The discussion traces Abbott’s career across government, academia, and public policy, including his work on issues at the intersection of antitrust and intellectual property. Together Quinn and Abbott examine how patents, licensing, and competition law should work together to promote innovation rather than undermine it. They also discuss how policy frameworks such as Bayh-Dole and standard essential patent protections helped shape the modern innovation economy, and why the wrong economic assumptions can distort how policymakers view patents, licensing, and market power. The conversation then turns to today’s policy environment, including the risks created when antitrust rhetoric treats intellectual property rights as suspect rather than as pro-competitive assets. Quinn and Abbott also explain why weakening patent rights and pushing innovators out of business negotiations and into litigation can damage the innovation ecosystem. The conversation closes by focusing on the core issue for patent owners and policymakers alike, namely that a functioning innovation economy requires predictable property rights, disciplined antitrust enforcement, and a clear recognition that patents are not obstacles to competition—they are often the foundation that makes competition possible.