Man cuts open giant snake's belly and is stunned by what's inside

I think an economist would tell you that this is completely incoherent. The only way to objectively determine the “economic value” of something is by observing the price it fetches in the marketplace. (The financial markets are currently learning the dangers of trying to compute asset values a priori) If the thing you’re trying to value is similar enough to something that’s commonly bought and sold (say, if your house is similar to your neighbor’s house that just sold), you can use that to get a reasonably accurate estimate of the product’s value. Likewise, if I want to determine the “economic value” of the “specific contribution” of the LCD panel in my MacBook to the laptop’s overall value, I can see what LCD panels with similar characteristics were selling for at the time my laptop was manufactured. But a patent is not a commodity. It’s not a component of a manufactured product. Rather, a patent is a legal entitlement to sue people who build certain kinds of devices or perform certain processes without the patent holder’s permission. There isn’t any objective answer to the question of how much of a products value is “properly attributable” to the fact that any given patent holder has agreed not to sue the manufacturer.