We certainly don't have proof, but there's a helluva historical correlation between patent enforcement (or existence) and countries with strong economic growth, particularly in technology sectors. That has to be referred to as evidence - since evidence which cannot be misleading, i.e. "incontrovertible evidence" is actually proof.
Moreover, histories of technology often show simultaneous invention, and in such cases, the obscure and unsuccessful efforts very strongly tend to appear in areas where patent law is not efficient or respected, and therefore investment for development of inventions is lacking. Without his patent, James Watt could not have and would not have (finally, after a long effort) found a sufficiently rich partner who could fund the development and production of his new kind of steam engine.
Note too that even if patents weren't globally efficient (which I strongly believe they are), they nonetheless attract inventors to your country and so are locally efficient (a prisoner's dilemma that only coordination through treaties would defeat.)
This doesn't mean that present patent law is ideal, or that the historical context hasn't at least partly vanished, however: very complex technologies (which we're now awash in) create situations in which it may be more valuable to cease to produce smartphones and instead use patents to hold a gun to the head of others and merely extract rent from those still producing them (sneezeMicrosoft.) Since you aren't producing phones, others can't retaliate by refusing to license their patents - you no longer need their patents. When more than one (or perhaps a thousand) IP holders want to extract rent from the same item, obviously this can introduce great inefficiencies. Few patents are truly essential (outside FRAND standards, a different situation) but many are costly to get around. One way or another, sooner or later, we may have to deal with this situation. I wish I knew just how.
A patent in a strong economy is worth more than a patent in a weak one, therefore it seems very likely they're pursued more, and probably also more lobbied-for. It also seems very likely that the same invention will grow more quickly in a strong economy than a weak one.
I certainly don't disagree that patents profit the inventor and attract investment, but to call that investment greater than the sum otherwise invested in competitors plainly denies that capitalism works.
Here's a thought: keep patents, but force a public license for a reasonable fee. It's the withholding of patents that walls-off progress, not reasonable rent-seeking. So keep the money, keep the incentive, but lose the ability to prevent competition.
On a moral note: do you really not think it twisted to punish somebody for building on the shoulders of who came before him? Is there anything more human than the ability to learn from and build on the work of your predecessors? I absolutely refuse to feel guilty for learning from what I see, and therefore to support the punishment of anybody else for it.
Developing economies with outside technologies they can copy should do better by ignoring patents, while economies at the bleeding edge should encourage more invention and disclosure through having them respected.
Didn't the US ignore patents when it was England that was the superpower? I wasn't there, but:
If you can get all the advantages of well-documented and reduced-to-practice inventions disclosed publicly without much disadvantage from your own citizens failing to disclose their own inventions, then ignoring patents seems like a great idea.
This isn't to say that I think the US patent system actually works, I think it's all a terrifically counterproductive mess 95% of the time. But there's historical evidence that whether your country benefits from patent adherence depends on how advanced your economy is relative to others.
Once China starts generating lots of good new inventions, now that they're bleeding-edge-adjacent, they're going to see increasing value in enforcing IP rights. It will protect their industry from competing with infringing imports from other countries with lower manufacturing costs, same as here, which is a bigger deal as their domestic consumption increases.
Actually, perhaps worth noting that the parent comment is talking about a correlation between robust economic growth and patent enforcement.
The causality could be reversed -- once economic growth is large enough that the country is at the bleeding edge of technology, then it cares about enforcing patents because it's lobbied to by its companies.
Nations have opted to ignore IP. For example, Sweden didn't respect copyright in the nineteeth century, so anybody could print Ibsen's plays. Or print them with different endings - including a quite popular version of "A Doll's House" with a happy ending where she returns and apologizes instead of leaving her husband! Eventually, Sweden decided it was losing out economically (Ibsen had moved to Italy or something by then) and decided IP was a good thing.
Moreover, histories of technology often show simultaneous invention, and in such cases, the obscure and unsuccessful efforts very strongly tend to appear in areas where patent law is not efficient or respected, and therefore investment for development of inventions is lacking. Without his patent, James Watt could not have and would not have (finally, after a long effort) found a sufficiently rich partner who could fund the development and production of his new kind of steam engine.
Note too that even if patents weren't globally efficient (which I strongly believe they are), they nonetheless attract inventors to your country and so are locally efficient (a prisoner's dilemma that only coordination through treaties would defeat.)
This doesn't mean that present patent law is ideal, or that the historical context hasn't at least partly vanished, however: very complex technologies (which we're now awash in) create situations in which it may be more valuable to cease to produce smartphones and instead use patents to hold a gun to the head of others and merely extract rent from those still producing them (sneezeMicrosoft.) Since you aren't producing phones, others can't retaliate by refusing to license their patents - you no longer need their patents. When more than one (or perhaps a thousand) IP holders want to extract rent from the same item, obviously this can introduce great inefficiencies. Few patents are truly essential (outside FRAND standards, a different situation) but many are costly to get around. One way or another, sooner or later, we may have to deal with this situation. I wish I knew just how.