It has been long recognised that the role and effects of patents vary considerably across
industries. This observation raises immediately to important sets of questions. First, can we
document systematically this heterogeneity and can we provide a conceptual framework for
explaining this diversity? Second, how should the patent system deal with these
differences? Should patent laws be tailored to industry specificities or should they be kept as
homogeneous as possible? In this paper, we focus mainly on the first question and only …