Does patent protection encourage or discourage innovation?

From the BBC:

Deep in a water treatment plant in Ramstein, near Kaiserslautern in south-west Germany, one woman believes she's found the answer [to fatbergs]. Dr Andrea Junker-Buchheit works for a start-up called Lipobak.

"We treat fatbergs with a special micro-organism solution. We grow bacteria which have been developed specifically to eat fat. They digest all the fat, all the grease, all the oil."
...
Work in this area started under a US patent nearly 30 years ago, but has come back to the fore since it expired.

The futility of R&D tax credits.

From the official government statistics on R&D tax credits:

- The total amount of [R&D tax credits paid or credited to companies] rose to £1.4 bn – an increase of £150m from the previous year. The cost of support for the SME scheme rose by £170m from £430m to £600m, while the cost of the large company scheme declined by £20m from £790m to £770m.

- The total R&D expenditure against which claims were made amounted to £13.2bn in
2012‐13, an increase of 10% from the previous year.

1. The maths of the claims is tortuous, but you can easily express the value of the subsidy/refund as 10.6% of total cost/spend - £1.4 bn divided by £13.2 bn.

2. I know from experience that approx. 90% of all the R&D expenditure for which the subsidy is claimed are the wages and salaries of people carrying out the research.

3. The UK has a stupid extra tax on wages and salaries called "Employer's National Insurance contributions" of 13.8% on top of wages and salaries and this is included in the costs for which companies receive a subsidy.

4. So here's a thought - assuming that such micro-meddling is a good idea in the first place - just exempt researchers' wages and salaries from Employer's National Insurance - the net cost after tax/subsidy would remain much the same, with a modest cash flow/timing advantage to the companies concerned.

Maths lesson:

Current rules
Total R&D spend/claim £100.
Includes £10 other costs and £90 of wages and salaries incl. NIC.
That £90 = net wages and salaries of £79.09 plus £10.91 Employer's NIC.
Refund average 10.6% of £100 = £10.60.
Net cost of R&D = £89.40

Simplified system
Net wages and salaries, NIC-exempt £79.09
Other costs £10
Total R&D cost = £89.09.

I realise that my 90% is just a guesstimate and that the first few thousand pounds of a person's wages and salaries are NI-exempt, but let's not get bogged down in details.

Movie Ratings

Always one of my favourite things, picking up on where professional journalists with their oh-so-high standards who don't do their research. From the Daily Mail on 50 Shades of Grey:-

If the first version of the film gets an R or restricted rating in America it could be seen by anyone aged 17 or over. A more explicit version may get the much rarer NC-17 certificate, which is reserved for films depicting rape or drug use.

… ah, no. Look, this stuff is on the MPAA website and takes about 1 minute to look it up.

The R rating in America is not for anyone aged 17 or over. It's 17, or for anyone accompanied by a parent or guardian.

The NC-17 isn't reserved for rape or drug use. It's for films that most parents would not consider to be suitable for their children.

The NC-17 is really like our 18 rating, only not many film makers go for it, generally preferring the R rating, which we don't have an equivalent of.

If the clever marketing strategy was followed in Britain the film could seek an 18 certificate for the more vanilla version and an R18 rating for the explicit cut, meaning it could be shown only in cinemas with a special license cinemas, revealed the Sunday Times.

But cinemas could legally change themselves into sex-film venues for 'special events' such as midnight screenings, as long as they get local authority approval, said a former adviser to the British Board of Film Classification.

Again... no.

The NC-17 certificate goes to films like Henry and June, A Serbian Film and Last Tango in Paris. Films that were given an 18 certificate by the BBFC.

The R18 certificate in the UK is almost exclusively (and I can find no exception) about hardcore pornography. You've pretty much got to go hammer and tongs on film to get one (and even then, if it's considered essential to the plot rather than just for titilation you can get an 18). And I can't quite imagine an upcoming, reasonably successful actress like Dakota Johnson doing that.