III. THE PROBLEM The conflict of perspectives on the social value of compulsory licensing is rooted in significant part in the complex economic effects of patent rights. A patent grants the inventor an exclusive right to exclude others from the use, manufacture, and sale of an invention if that invention is useful, novel, non-obvious, and of appropriate subject matter." Robert Cooter and Thomas Ulen argue that the "granting of a patent creates a monopoly," since only the patent holder is legally allowed to market the new invention.63 The patent holder may of course "elect to license some or all of the rights embodied by the patentessentially 'waiving the right to sue' for redress of infringing conduct," but such licensing, if a result of voluntary bargaining on the part of the patent holder, will often secure for the patent holder much of the monopolistic value of the patent right.64 The creation of monopolies in newly-invented materials has both an incentive effect on the discovery of new inventions since "monopolists earn profits that exceed the ordinary rate of return on an investment" and an effect on the pricing and provision of the patented product whereby "too little of the monopolized good is produced and the price is too high., 65 This Note will look at the economic basis of each of these effects in turn.