ABSTRACT
The patent regime is the highest cost form of protection in terms of system expense, followed by the trademark system. The patent system is inherently the most expensive form of protection to administer. It involves, in the highest–cost version, the painstaking examination of applications to assure that the claimed invention is unique and unobvious from the prior art. The one–time cost of converting historical trademark records to a computer base is easily offset over only a few years by the greatly increased efficiency and speed of administration. The copyright registry serves simply as a repository of works as to which copyright protection is claimed. The public cost consists of providing a court system for conduct of the litigation. World–scale plants reduce costs through volume efficiency. Intermediate steps toward these longer–term cost reduction possibilities have already been taken.
