Elves or Trolls? According to Robert Frost, it's Neither

I had the privilege of hearing Prof. Geradin speak at a recent conference.  On my view, he is one of the best academic experts on patent law.  But I have to question the premise of his recent paper, Elves or Trolls? The Role of Non-practicing Patent Owners in the Innovation Economy.

I question it not because I disagree with the basic argument, which is that some patent trolls perform an important role in clearing markets by speculating on the prospective value of patent claims in litigation.  Rather, I question it because I believe it falls short of a full theory of how inventions foster growth within an economy.

But today I'm feeling a little lazy.  So instead of making the argument explicitly, I'm going to quote Robert Frost's excellent poem, "Mending Wall," which takes as its subject the question of why people spend time and money on defining and maintaining property rights.  Note that Frost explicitly addresses the role of Elves in the allocation of property.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Comments

[Sean F.]

Frost himself, of course, doesn't exactly approve of well-defined property rights in this poem - at least where there aren't any cows.

[Michael F. Martin]

You're right that he doesn't exactly approve -- "Something there is that doesn't love a wall"

But note that he's still building them with his neighbor anyway.