Non‐Obviousness and Screening
论文为专利的非显而易见性要求提供了新解释：创新分研究和开发两阶段，提高非显而易见性标准能筛选出低效创新者，减少逆向选择，但也会排除边缘创新，存在社会最优标准。
The paper offers a novel justification for the non‐obviousness patentability requirement. An innovation involves two stages: research results in a technology blueprint, which development transforms into a profitable activity. An innovator, who is either efficient or inefficient, must rely on outside finance for the development. Only patented technologies are developed. Strengthening the non‐obviousness requirement alleviates adverse selection by discouraging inefficient innovators from doing research, but creates inefficiencies by excluding marginal innovations. We show that it is socially optimal to raise the non‐obviousness requirement so as to exclude bad innovators; we also provide several robustness checks and discuss the policy implications.