About that regulatory itch..............

     "Regulation is another area in which we have failed to put innovation at the center of our thinking.  There are good regulations and bad regulations and lots of debate over which is which.  From an innovation perspective, however, this debate misses a key point.  Let's assume that all regulations are good.  The problem is that even if each regulation is good, the net effect of all the regulations combined may be bad.  A single pebble in a big stream doesn't do much, but throw enough pebbles and the stream of innovation gets dammed.   The patent thicket we illustrated in Figure 1 (editor's note: added and explained below) has an analog, the regulation thicket.
-Alex Tabarrok, Launching the Innovation Renaissance

This chart (taken from here) was used by Tabarrock in his
chapter about the sorry state of patents.  The above chart
attempts to show all the patent infringement lawsuits that
have been filed over "smartphones."  I believe his point is that
complexity imposed upon innovation hinders it.